


Throw the First Stone

by AsterHowl



Series: Eris is Lurking [2]
Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Action, F/F, F/M, Gen, Subtext, UST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-16
Updated: 2015-09-16
Packaged: 2018-04-20 09:44:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 23,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4782812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AsterHowl/pseuds/AsterHowl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Helena Cain is forced to stand trial for ordering her soldiers to murder innocent civilians. Those that would pass judgement on her battles with demons, discovering to their horror that each one of them is more like Cain than they care to admit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Gaius examined the pale birch carpet and coffee cream walls and every luxury that decorated the room and thought how laughably they failed to make up for everything the woman had been through. She sat on the end of the bed, twisting her fingers, and the persistent sheen to her eyes ripped his heart apart.

It was a small miracle he’d been able to arrange this apartment for her on Cloud 9. Gina was a Cylon and it had been no small feat convincing Admiral Adama and President Roslin that the Galactica brig was an unsuitable environment for making psychological progress with the prisoner. In the end they reluctantly agreed that she was of little use if she was still traumatized, and he later found out Captain Thrace had some influence over Roslin’s decision.

He expected it had something to do with the fact that the young pilot risked her life to save Gina, and didn’t want that gesture wasted by having her unceremoniously tossed out an airlock. Whatever else was at play, he was glad to have her out of the Pegasus brig and living in comfortable surroundings, albeit under twenty-four hour Marine guard.

He sat on his usual chair facing her, watching her eyes dart from him to her lap. The wounds she suffered in captivity were nearly healed. But there were scars that lay deeper. Helena Cain should have to pay for what she did to her, but talking to Roslin was like beating down a brick wall with his bare hands.

He had wrongly assumed that the female President of the Colonies would be more likely to respond proactively to the violation of a woman, but a woman was not how Roslin saw Gina. A Cylon was not a person. A Cylon had no rights. Gina lived now only because of the information she could provide the fleet in their struggle against the rest of the Cylons, and the insistence of a cocky Viper pilot.

If the sight before him were not so heartbreaking he would be scoffing at the madness of it all. He trained his features, but found it hard to find a balance between too emotional and too apathetic. The soothing sensation of a warm hand slipped across his shoulders and a gentle voice calmed him.  
“It’s okay Gaius. She feels safe with you. All you have to do is talk to her.”

When he first saw Gina in her cell on Pegasus, Six was understandably upset. She reflected the pain he felt tenfold, and it hurt him more to see that physical manifestation with his own eyes. She had to leave him, but had since found the strength to support him, to help him help the broken Cylon.

“Talk to her, like you always do. It helps her.”

“How are you feeling?” He always started there. It was more for his benefit than hers. Every time he entered the room he was struck by the horror of her ordeal and lost his voice. It was a question to help him find it. Usually she responded with an abrupt, ‘fine’, but today she rocked slowly and was silent.

Six was as concerned as he was. She walked over to Gina and hovered beside the bed, the enchanting features they shared drawn taut with sorrow. Gina did not sense her presence, of course, but Six knelt down beside her as though she could offer her the strength she provided Gaius every day. He was shocked but not surprised that it worked.

“I’m not sure. I’m not sure,” Gina’s head tilted and she squinted at something far away, “how I’m supposed to respond.”  
Gaius blinked and frowned. “How do you mean, respond?”  
“I thought I knew,” she paused and Gaius watched her press her finger into her palm, “what it meant.”  
Six peered up at her. Obviously she had even less an idea than Gaius.  
“What what meant?” he asked. Gina’s eyes narrowed and glimmered with tears. “Gina?” Gaius urged gently. She said no more and Six looked back at him helplessly.

 

* * *

 

Retired life was excruciating. Occasionally it nagged Helena that she had just given up. It took every ounce of mental strength to convince herself that that wasn’t what this was. Her former path had been bloody, and at night it could horrify her to think what one more step could have cost, could have led to.

Once again she was angry, and likely to make another bad choice. She used to pride herself on knowing exactly what to do in any given situation. But it was one situation in particular that left her winded and numb, every nerve shut down, every thought blank, and the only reason she reacted at all was the residual instinct of a suddenly empty heart craving blood.

After handing over her pins to Adama, Helena was issued a luxurious room appropriate for a retired high ranking officer on the Zephyr, and was allowed to sulk in peace.

It was better to be angry. Better to concentrate on the loathing she felt for Bill Adama and Laura Roslin. It was even better to concentrate on resenting Thrace for disrupting her life and her mission and knocking her off her path because when she didn’t, she thought of Gina. It was hard to stop once she started.

The Cylon’s touch was burned into her skin. When her guard was down the sensations echoed; phantom caresses no lighter than breath and always accompanied by the vivid memory of her face, her voice, her smell. Helena needed distractions.

She sat at her desk, spinning her razor on the tip of its blade against the old wooden surface, hilt under her fingertip. It made the light flash and effectively kept her mind empty for a long time. The sound of the knock at her door rattled her skull.

She didn’t get many visitors. Occasionally Adama called, as though she wasn’t the last person in the universe he wanted to talk to. Helena would say the feeling was mutual, but by some miracle Roslin hadn’t dropped dead yet.

Helena flipped the blade and tossed it into the desk drawer as she stood up. It was a shock to see Thrace standing there. Helena scoffed and arched an eyebrow.  
“It must be really good news.”

Kara chewed her lip. Helena sighed and stepped back to allow her in. She shut the door and watched Kara walk into the middle of the room, thumbs in pockets, shoulders tensed. The girl looked about, taking in all the cosy furnishings and bright decorations and scattered war memorabilia that were supposed to say something about the room’s occupant. It told her nothing.

Completing a rotation she came to face Helena again and winced at her impatient expression. That was when Helena discovered she could still intimidate at least one person in the fleet. It made her smirk and start to chuckle. Kara looked confused. Helena scoffed and waved her hand, pressing fingers to her brow.  
“I’m sorry. You know how prone I am to inappropriate responses.”

Kara nodded slowly. “Garner’s dead.”  
Helena snorted and then grimaced in an effort not to laugh.  
“Gods. How?”  
“Oxygen leak. He sacrificed himself to save the Pegasus.” Helena could see Kara watching her reaction closely. The former Admiral took in a deep breath and moved across the room. She stood away from the girl, waiting for her nerves to calm down. Garner was an exceptional officer and a good man.

Through every crisis he kept her ship running as smoothly as though the guns and missiles fired upon them by the Cylons were but pesky, insignificant bug bites, and to be able to give those frakking toasters the proverbial finger in such a way gave her no small sense of pride.

She found it hard to believe the man could be taken down by such a common fault in the ship herself. But there was always a story, always things at play she had no idea about, no control over, and since leaving the military she had even less a glimpse at the pages.

“Lee Adama was promoted. He commands the Pegasus now.”

Helena barked with amusement and turned with arms folded in revulsion. But when she tried to think of an adequate way to express her outrage the best she could manage was, “That’s great.”

If Kara had any comment in the boy’s defence she kept it to herself. Starved for decent human interaction, Helena made an awkward attempt at conversation.  
“How’s the President?”  
Kara peered at her. “You care?”  
“I care to know how she was cured.”

“That’s confidential.”  
Helena glared and Kara set her jaw, but after a moment her eyes closed irritably. “The DNA of Sharon’s unborn child.”  
Helena’s brows shot up. It seemed those gods damned machines were determined to make her suffer in every conceivable way possible.  
“So, thanks to the Cylons, Laura Roslin lives to ruin another day.”

Kara stared unappreciatively, but then her lips pulled into a reluctant smile. Helena indulged in the moment to share a chuckle with her but Kara was suddenly biting her lip again.

Instinct made her suddenly wary and her skin crawled with dread.  
“You didn’t just come here to tell me your boyfriend moved into my old room.”  
“He’s not…” Kara sighed. With her hands on her hips she looked down and shook her head. Helena could see her biting down hard on her lip. When Kara turned towards the door she looked back only to say,  
“I’m here to arrest you.”

Thrace opened the door and walked out into the hall. Then Marines filled her room. Hands tugged her arms and Helena had to hold her breath at the contact. Cold metal cuffs locked around her wrists and she closed her eyes, seeing instantly the bright blue eyes and the warm, pouting smile she fought so hard to forget.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Laura Roslin and Karl Agathon are haunted by their similarities with Helena Cain.

Laura felt her skin was slowly peeling from her flesh. It was her body protesting against the thought of the needless execution of innocent civilians. There was no way to express her anger, her revulsion, her fear or the sickness that spread faster, attacked more viciously than the cancer ever did. She felt her body overloaded, ready to self destruct, and despite the irony of her analogies, they were no less adequate.

There was something about Cain’s eyes that impressed on Laura a feeling of frenzy that made chills race down the back of her neck. It was not that they were cold. They weren’t even empty. They burned, but silently, like a sun seen through a telescope from light years away. Contained within was raw, awesome power, possessed of an assuredness there was no force that could approach, let alone penetrate its surface and survive.

She could remember her eyes were the first thing Laura noticed, after the undeniable authority of her stance, when they were introduced. Intensity; that was her thought, or it was very much the foundation from where her thoughts progressed. Intensity. Intensity. Intensity. She could hear the word in her own heartbeat.

Laura wondered then if Helena had been looking at her and deciding her fate. She wondered, if the Admiral hadn’t learnt of her cancer, how long it would have been before a gun was levelled at her head and a bullet sent through her skull. Then, she had to remind herself, she had the same idea.

That was what truly frightened her. Cain may have given the order to kill innocent people. It was not yet proven. What was certain was Laura had very nearly given the order to kill Cain in cold blood. She had voiced it. She told Bill it was necessary. It was in the best interests of the fleet, of humanity’s continued survival.

And it would not even be him pulling the trigger. That terrible duty would have fallen to Kara Thrace, a girl who once looked upon Laura with such awe and faith she sped halfway across the galaxy and back just because she asked.

Laura couldn’t know what Helena was thinking. She couldn’t say the woman would have killed her, given half the chance. All Laura could say was that she herself had wanted Helena dead. Laura was sick. She’d been unable to so much as look at Captain Thrace since her daring rescue of her friends held captive on Pegasus.

She continually asked Starbuck to put her life on the line for her and the fleet. Then she asked her to put her soul on the line. These things would haunt Laura for the rest of her life, and apparently, that was going to be a little longer than expected. Which meant she had to put up with Gaius Baltar longer than expected also.

The man stalked into her office with his head fixed on his shoulders as though he were performing some sensational balancing act, carrying a tower of secret, privileged knowledge he alone had the skill and bearing to keep upright.

“Thank you for agreeing to see me, Madame President,” he said, coming to stand before her. It was an insincere gesture of respect Laura was prepared to meet with one of her own. She smiled sweetly.  
“Not at all,” she said, standing. She was pleased to see the twitch of confusion under his eye as he watched her walk around her desk and take a seat by the windows. She extended an arm to the seat opposite her, level with her, equal with her. “Please, sit.”

Gaius cleared his throat. Laura was pleased at the clear sign of discomfort. He went over to the chair and perched on its front most edge and spent a while unsure of how to distribute his weight or where to put his hands. When he settled he looked down into his lap and she was surprised by the sobriety in his eyes when he looked up.

“Madame President, I understand some serious charges were laid against retired Admiral Helena Cain.”  
She wondered how he could know. Her arrest could only have happened not even five minutes ago. She was always suspicious of how he always seemed to know what he shouldn’t, but she was too impatient to wonder about it today.

She groaned inwardly and tried half heartedly to hide the grimace from her face. He had raised the issue of the Cylon’s treatment aboard the Pegasus before. He had wanted Cain charged with torture of a prisoner of war.

She crossed her legs in anticipation, weaving her fingers together and setting her hands upon her knee. Gaius looked at her like a wounded animal.   
“I wonder if we might revisit issues I have previously raised with you regarding her treatment of the Cylon prisoner, Gina Inviere.”

The sound of her name grated inside her skull and made an odd sensation crawl up her throat. Reading her obvious reluctance, Gaius pressed again. “The methods,” his voice cracked curiously and there seemed genuine revulsion in his eyes, “Cain used to torture the prisoner clearly suggest she was consciously aware of the very human consequences of the abuse. If at any point she thought the Cylon merely a machine why go to such extremes?”

Laura felt her patience thinning and Gaius could see he was about to lose. He spoke with greater force and urgency. “Cain abused the prisoner as though she were human, she should be tried for those actions.”  
“Dr Baltar,” she said, “If I charge Cain with the mistreatment of a Cylon prisoner, if I recognize that Cylons have the same rights as humans, this fleet will fall into ruin. There will be riots, people will get hurt. This is something I just cannot risk.”

Gaius lolled his head desperately. “Madame President, please…”  
“If that is all, Dr Baltar, I have work to get back to.”  
As she stood from her chair Gaius eyed her with a profound disappointment. It was penetrating and was accompanied by a chill that came only from being utterly exposed. It wasn’t what Gaius saw in her that troubled Laura as she returned to her desk. It was what he didn’t see in her.

 

* * *

 

Lately, Helo felt his life go by in a series of life sentences. It began when the Cylons attacked the Colonies. The news crackled throughout the ship in Adama’s strained and heavy voice and Helo felt his whole body brace stubbornly against a towering wave of dread. When he gave up his seat on the Raptor to Gaius Baltar, he spent hours heaving self pitying laughter at the dirt.

After weeks running from the Cylons on Caprica, he was returned to Galactica and suddenly found himself arrested and awaiting a firing squad. It was funny that when he was actually facing a legitimate life sentence it was the only time he wasn’t too worried. He had started to detect a pattern of last minute reprieves.

He couldn’t be sure how he felt when Helena Cain stepped off the Raptor in Marine custody. She looked different in civilian clothing. She wore them like they were the embrace of pity she never asked for. She kept her eyes down as the usual activity on the deck slowed to a stop and only the boots of the Marines could be heard as they marched her away.

Chief came up to him, wiping grease from his hands on a stained rag. He acknowledged the irony of what they just witnessed with a grunt and leaned against a tool trolley. Work only just resumed when there was a flash of movement and a ribbon of blood slapped Chief across the eyes.

Narcho had launched a fist at Laird’s face and Helo quickly grabbed the man by the shoulders to stop him pummelling the visiting Pegasus deck chief into the metal decking.   
“You frakking bastard! I know it was you!” Narcho roared. Helo and other specialists tried to pull him away but the pilot’s elbow struck him under the jaw and he went crashing backwards, dazing as the back of his head smacked the deck with a resonating clang.

When Chief was offering him a hand to get up Narcho had been subdued by Hot Dog, and Stinger was telling him to calm down.   
“You alright?” Chief asked.   
Helo felt his jaw, relieved it wasn’t broken or dislocated.   
“Yeah. I’ll be fine. Laird…?”  
Chief was still wiping the blood from his face. “Taken him to Life Station. He’s unconscious.”

Helo didn’t need to ask what had happened or why it happened. It was understandable the Pegasus crew were still loyal to their former Commanding Officer. She was the one who saved them, supported them and inspired them through the most terrifying ordeal anyone could imagine. It didn’t matter that she could just as easily have had them rounded up and airlocked to conserve resources.

Helo couldn’t remember hating anyone more than he hated Helena Cain. He had heard of the way the Cylon prisoner on her ship was treated. The thought that she could condone, let alone encourage that kind of behaviour made him violently ill. Conducting it in the name of humanity caused his blood to boil, and he wanted to scream.

But then sleep came and he entered a familiar world. The grass at his feet, the pale sky above, and behind him the proud Raptor on which he flew with Sharon. Around him were men, women, children. All scared, all desperate, and he was afraid. They wanted to get past him. He held a gun.

“How is it any different?”  
Helo spun around. Cain was standing apart from the crowd, an overseer to his dilemma. The crowd was closing around him. “Get back! I will shoot you!” His lips never moved but it was his own voice and he cringed with confusion.   
“How is it any different; what you did? I saved who I could. So did you. What more could we do?”   
Cain’s voice came as though her mouth were right next to his ear but he could see her standing several feet from him, unmoving.

Faces swarmed him. They were too close. He screamed and fired. He fired into the air. He didn’t kill anyone. He never shot anyone.   
Suddenly she was right beside him. “I made the threat. Same as you.”  
It wasn’t the same. He never forced families to part.  
“Those people had families. Families that might have been able to get off the Colonies. Families that might now be in your fleet. You forced them to stay behind. You threatened to shoot them if they tried otherwise.”

She smiled. “We aren’t that different.”  
And he shot her.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sharon tries to comfort the man she loves. Kendra Shaw speaks to Lee about Cain's arrest.

Sharon’s eyes were soft with concern as she reached for the phone. The man she loved was every shade of shame and distress, and she felt dread slither down her back.  
“Karl? What’s wrong? What’s happening?”  
“They’ve arrested Cain,” he said

Sharon couldn’t understand why this concerned him. She’d never seen him look so worried. Even when they were stuck on Caprica running for their lives.

“There’s gonna be a trial. She’s facing the death penalty,” Helo went on, voice shallow.  
“Good riddance,” Sharon said, but then knew it was the wrong thing to say. Her lover grimaced, his brow tensing, jaw clenching.

“Helo, what’s wrong? Talk to me.”  
He wiped his mouth as though he could regain composure, but it was a while before he spoke. When he did, his voice trembled.  
“I keep thinking about the day of the attack. We…The other Sharon and I,” he corrected himself regrettably, but Sharon only urged him on with a gentle smile.

He looked away for a moment, biting his lips. Sharon knew he was trying not to cry. She wished she could hold him. She wished she could offer more comfort than her hand pressed against the window separating them.

“We had a Raptor. There was a crowd of civilians,” Helo said, turning back to her after a breath. “They wanted rescuing. There were too many so…we drew a lottery. I gave up my seat for Gaius Baltar so I stayed behind.” Sharon winced as his voice got higher. “The people were angry and desperate. There was no telling…I had to protect the ship.”

Sharon pressed her hand more forcefully against the glass. She ached not being able to touch him, to cup his cheek and soothe his brow.

“I threatened to shoot those people. I threatened to kill innocent people.” Helo grit his teeth. “I basically decided who lived and who we left behind. Just like Cain. I’m just like her and she’s…”  
He leaned forward and his forehead gently struck the window. His free hand hit the pane feebly in despair and Sharon tried to hush him.

“Helo. Helo, listen to me. You are not like Helena Cain. You are nothing like her, you hear me? You did what you could to save as many people as possible.”  
He leaned to the side and he eyes screwed shut helplessly.  
“Cain saved who she could.”  
“That’s bullshit. She could have protected that whole ship. Galactica protected a whole fleet by herself every frakking day before the Pegasus came along. Cain is a heartless coward.”

She tried to touch his face through the window as he grimaced again.  
“You are a good man, Karl Agathon. You save people. You saved me.”  
Helo sniffed and breathed deeply, eyes closed and head down, still leaning on the window.

“You and Starbuck are going back, right? Back to Caprica to save those survivors. That’s a good thing, Helo. That’s a brave and noble thing.” She stroked the glass with a finger where the skin of his forehead touched the window.

The man was just breathing now. Slowly, in and out, in and out, and his breath crackled through the receiver. Sharon tried to smile so that when he finally looked up at her, he could believe in what she said.

“I hate that they keep you here,” Helo murmured into the phone. He pressed his hand flat against the window and Sharon moved her hand to reflect it. “It’s wrong. You deserve better than this. Adama…the whole frakking fleet owes you.”

He still had not looked up at her and Sharon worried that her smile had become stale and grim. She couldn’t deny the feeling she was being treated unfairly, but she would be patient. She believed in humanity and she believed in herself.

Helo backed off the window to lift his head. “I’m going to get you out of here. Adama has to listen to me. He has to see what you’ve done for this fleet.”

She couldn’t stop him. He hung up the phone and strode off purposefully before she could utter a sound. She wanted to save him the disappointment. Sharon knew now was not the time to pester the Old Man with matters of that pregnant Cylon they had in the brig. The one who looked like Boomer.

Sharon sighed and shuffled to her bed, straining in discomfort. She eased herself down, lay back and thought about Boomer. It was odd having her memories. It was like remembering two lives. There was the life of her training as a Cylon soldier, and the life of the little girl who lost her parents in a mining tragedy.

She had memories of being a child, knowing she had never looked younger than she did now. She remembered her parents, their faces, their voices, the smell of the perfume her mother liked to wear and the way her father always made stupid jokes. She remembered they would hold her hands and swing her between them and could remember how she thought things would be like that for ever.

But it wasn’t her. Even the memories that were actually Boomer’s, the ones she made after the false memories, were not her. Sometimes Sharon felt she was Boomer. It was difficult sharing your head with a whole other identity. Boomer had more memories than she did; A whole life with a childhood, awkward teenage years, first boyfriends, first kisses, stupid mistakes, and achievements that made her parents proud.

Sharon had a much different life. It began when she was activated, sensing instantly her true nature and that everything she knew had been planted. She understood so much at once. A memory of suddenly knowing everything about herself was a lot different to memories of gradually discovering the kind of person she was and learning about the world. It was a lot different to actually having experiences.

Boomer had a memory of learning not to touch fire because it burned, and how her father had run her finger under cold water and kissed it better. Sharon remembered being submerged in warm goo and a Three tenderly stroking her face saying, “Welcome to life, sister.”

Boomer had a memory of learning how to ride a bike and grazing her knees and how much it stung. Sharon remembered sitting in a room with a One who was telling her she had been chosen for a special mission.

It wasn’t until she had been given Boomer’s memories that Sharon ever thought about what it was to learn and experience. She could appreciate it would have been difficult for Boomer to learn that everything she knew and believed in was a lie. The parents she had loved with all her heart and believed were watching over her in death had never existed to begin with. Thinking about it made her angry. So she knew Boomer would be too, wherever she was.

But those memories were only a comfort in times when Sharon felt her faith slipping. Sharon knew who she was. No one was going to tell her who she wasn’t.

 

* * *

 

Lee was sick of learning the hard way. He learned he could sacrifice the few for the sake of the many when he shot down the Olympic Carrier. He learned he would sacrifice the many for the sake of friendship when Kara was lost on that moon. He learned that Human and Cylon were not the clear indicators he wished they could be for who he could trust and who he could not.

When he was just a lowly CAG he could scoff at the leadership of his father and doubt he possessed the qualities necessary for fair and efficient command of a Battlestar. He could question Saul Tigh as his choice of XO. He could call his father’s response to Roslin’s Arrow of Apollo crusade a failure of heart and the despotic, irresponsible soothing of his poor wounded ego.

Lee could stroll down the corridors on Galactica insisting that he would never lose sight of what was important, that he would never sacrifice his integrity the way his father had done. He could think, in private moments, that he would make a better leader.

Now he was the Commander and the universe was waiting for him to make good on his claims. The rumours of Cain’s arrest spread like wildfire across his ship. The outrage was palpable. The riots were frequent. The conscripted civilians from the Scylla and other ships Cain encountered in those early weeks after the Cylons attacked needed to be isolated for their own safety. Yesterday they were all sharing drinks, sharing racks, working together as a crew. Today half his crew were outsiders, traitors.

Again Lee cursed his father, furious that he had not come to him first, allowed him to form some kind of strategy to deal with the consequences of slapping the former Admiral, to whom all but a fraction of his crew were still unconditionally loyal, in chains and throwing her in a cell. He was livid that the old man had never stopped to consider the danger he had put him and his crew in, danger from ensuing violence and unrest.

He’d needed to station extra Marines outside his door just to feel safe and he hated the weakness it showed to his men. He was grateful when a brisk knock interrupted his internal rampage and gave him a moment to relax his eyes from the log book he was reading.

“Come in.”  
Shaw walked in, clipping her heels and saluting militantly. Lee smiled, acknowledging how unused to such displays of military discipline he had become being so long onboard Galactica. There was something to be said about Cain’s leadership. She never let her crew forget who they were.

“Galactica has just sent over these files. They contain the revised conditions for the transfer of deckhands.” Shaw held the folder in both hands, waiting for the signal to approach his desk. If it were Kara, she would have sauntered up to him already, tossed the folder in front of him and leaned over it, grinning like Lee was supposed to want something else, something more.

“Oh, good. We might finally get some work done when my pilots don’t want to kill the deck staff.”  
Shaw approached and handed the folder to Lee. He opened it and scanned it briefly. On the final pages were the signatures of Roslin and his father. He spat in contempt and cast it aside.  
“You know what’s ironic?” he said, looking up at his XO, “Is from what I’ve read,” and he tapped his finger down on the open log, “Cain would never have stood for this kind of behaviour.”

“No she would not, Sir.” Shaw agreed with a dutiful nod.  
Lee regarded her for a moment and leaned back in his seat. He could see her eyes darting from him to the pile of log books.  
“Something on your mind, Major?”  
The woman hesitated and Lee saw the muscles tensing in her jaw. He remained calm, not wanting her to think her opinion was not welcome.

“What’s your assessment of Cain?” she asked finally, and for a moment her features no longer looked so stern, “I’m curious.”  
“So far?” Lee was relieved and amused at her question. “Actually, she’s nothing like I expected her to be.” He smiled genuinely and was pleased at the fleeting smile that flickered on Shaw’s lips. “She writes so candidly, and her affection for her Battlestar and her crew is…moving.”

“Will you use her logs as evidence in her trial?” Shaw asked. That was obviously what she was most interested in.  
“When Cain agrees to a lawyer I will put forth my interest in her defence.”  
“You think she’s innocent?” Shaw’s brows came together curiously.

“I didn’t say that,” said Lee, carefully, “But…we’ve all done things…terrible things…in the name of survival.”  
Shaw eyed him steadily, her dark eyes penetrating uncomfortably. But Lee didn’t falter. He deserved and welcomed the scrutiny. He wanted to be accountable and he was glad he had an XO who would keep him honest instead of one that would keep him drunk.

The number of times he had been called before Saul Tigh and his father while the two of them sat there drinking and laughing were too numerous. It was the reason he had left in the first place.

“When is the trial?” Shaw asked.  
“President Roslin hasn’t decided. There’s trouble with Gaius Baltar. He insists on adding charges of abuse to the Cylon prisoner. But you can’t condemn Cain and not the other soldiers involved, and the fleet will have trouble accepting that a Cylon is anything more than a machine. It’s…tricky.”

But Lee didn’t think so. If he allowed himself for one minute to think of the Cylon as a woman he would never be able to look his crew in the eyes again.

“Sir, I’m going to visit Cain on Galactica,” said Shaw, standing stiff.  
Lee frowned. “I understand your loyalty, Major, but do you think that’s a good idea with everything that’s going on. I really need you here.”  
“She was my Commanding Officer. She deserves that I at least make the effort to see her.”

Lee smiled, knowing he’d made the right decision making her his XO.  
“Of course. Whenever you’d like.”  
“Thank you, Sir.”  
“You’re welcome.”

Shaw reached for the log that lay open on his desk and turned it about. He didn’t protest as she scanned the contents of the pages. He wasn’t about to deny her such a small strand of connection to her former commanding officer.

“Wow. You’ve really gone back to where it all began haven’t you?” she said. Her tone made it clear she was sceptical of the benefit such extensive reading could be to him. Lee just smiled.  
“I believe I owe it to my predecessor to acknowledge the years she spent nurturing my crew.”  
Shaw nodded, smirking. “So she writes candidly, huh? You might be in for a real treat, then.”

Lee tilted his head. “Why’s that?”  
Shaw spun the log back around and pushed it towards him. “This is around the time the Cylon comes aboard.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bill asks Kara to talk to Cain.

Kara could still hear her crying. She could still feel the warmth of her back, the way she trembled, and how the woman sank into her lap and shivered. If it was an admission of guilt Kara didn’t want to acknowledge it. She didn’t like to have any thoughts or feelings about that day at all. Cain was a civilian. Cain was a murderer.

Despite her efforts not to think about it, it was all she could do until she bumped into Helo coming in the opposite direction. He held her arms to steady her and apologized.   
“It’s fine, Helo. Really,” she said pointedly when he failed to remove his hands from her shoulders. He released her quickly and ran his hands over his face. She eyed him in amusement. “Gods. What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing,” he snapped. Then he sighed and stuck his hands on his hips. For a moment he stood in silence as deep lines spread across his brow.   
“Adama. He won’t release Sharon.”  
“Cause she’s a Cylon,” Kara reminded him.  
“So’s that other woman! And she’s living in luxury on Cloud 9!”

Kara’s voice was gentle. “A cell’s a cell, Helo.”  
Helo rubbed his mouth irritably and left his fingers clutching his jaw for a moment. He shook his head. “She’s pregnant. She can’t stay in that place. He can’t keep her there.”  
Kara frowned, hating that she felt his pain, hating that he could make her empathize with that machine.

“The Old Man’s got a lot on his mind right now. Cain’s in custody. There’s going to be a trial. I heard there are riots.”  
Helo sighed, drooping his head before looking up at her. “Yeah. They put Narcho in the brig.”  
“Probably nothing compared to what Lee’s dealing with.” She automatically smirked, but then thought she shouldn’t be smiling. She pressed fingers to her brow and tried to frown, but her smile refused to leave, so she laughed at the fact she was losing her mind.

Helo looked concerned. “Kara?”  
“Ah. I’m fine. On my way to see the Admiral myself, actually.”  
“Yeah. I was there when he put the call through,” said Helo. “Look, I…” he shifted his stance awkwardly. Kara slanted an eyebrow. “I haven’t thanked you yet. For saving my life. So…thanks.”  
Kara was only smiling because her features had frozen uncomfortably. She snapped herself out of it. “You don’t have to thank me for that. You would have done the same for me.”

Helo laughed airily and nodded. “Yeah. I’m a big hero. Seems to get me into trouble.”  
Kara chuckled.   
“You know, Sharon would like to thank you, too. If you want to visit…” He let the offer trail. He knew she was still not comfortable seeing Sharon as the young nugget who botched every gods damned landing, the kid who followed her around wanting only to impress the godlike Starbuck.

He knew she still had trouble recovering from the idea that all the significant moments in her life were tainted by the presence of a person who wasn’t even real. And Kara knew he was going to be patient with her until she could accept that Sharon was always real. Where she came from didn’t change the person she had become.

“Maybe,” Kara said. Helo’s eyes shined hopefully.   
“You better get going,” he said. He let her go with a kind hand on her shoulder and she continued on her way to Bill Adama’s quarters.

The first thing Bill asked her was if she was alright. His eyes were gentle, his voice soft, and his smile was pained. There were papers on his desk where his fingers were still flexed, as if he needed to support himself just to stand and face her.

“I’m alright, Sir.”  
His smile quivered at her response, as though he didn’t deserve her enthusiasm. He looked down briefly and spent a moment pushing papers aside before returning his gaze to her.   
“I appreciate it was probably difficult for you to hear what Helena Cain is accused of. I know you admired her.”  
“Admire, Sir,” she corrected him smugly. “Innocent till proven guilty, right?”

Bill huffed fondly, and there was a glitter of warmth in his eyes before they darkened again.   
“The President is having a hard time deciding how to proceed with Cain’s trial. The Scylla survivors Cain conscripted to the military are demanding a public trial. Roslin hesitates because Gaius Baltar will insist on bringing up charges of torture against the Cylon prisoner, and the public could react badly if this turns into a debate over Cylon rights. Cain may be tried before a small military panel to avoid making it a spectacle.”

Kara absorbed this information quietly.   
“I fail to see what this has to do with me.”  
Bill began to move around his desk as he spoke.   
“Baltar was supposed to perform a psyche evaluation on Cain, but his obvious bias would render it inadmissible.” He stopped in front of Kara. “I assume Cain would refuse to speak to him anyway.”

Kara kept her features strict and expectant.  
“She’s refusing representation,” said Bill. He waited, obviously expecting some sort of reaction from her. She offered none. Bill sighed and bowed his head, folding his arms. “I’m growing concerned that Cain might welcome a guilty verdict.”

Still not getting a response from Kara, he went on uncomfortably.   
“I don’t condone what may or may not have happened onboard the Scylla, but I know that she was in a difficult situation, under extraordinary circumstances and in times of war it is better to act than not at all. The slightest hesitation gets you and countless others killed.”

At this Kara scoffed. She smiled tragically, eyes gleaming, and looked at him with the kind of hope and love Bill found almost impossible to bear. “There had to be an alternative,” she said.  
“In retrospect,” Bill agreed, surprised he’d found the breath to utter a word.   
“No,” Kara insisted firmly. She stared hard into his eyes, making sure he listened to her. “There is no way you could have ever done what she did. No way.”  
“I wanted to stay and fight the Cylons. What I would have done would have got us all killed,” Bill reminded her.

Kara edged forward desperately. “You would have protected that ship. You would have protected the Scylla. Not killed half its occupants and stripped it for parts and left it for the frakking Cylons.”  
Bill’s eyes shined like a cloudless sky reflected in deep calm waters. Kara held his gaze with an urgency that she wouldn’t let him ignore. She needed him to believe what she said.

“You’re right,” he said, smiling warmly. “I would have protected that ship. At the very least, I would have protected its people.”  
Kara didn’t back down until she was satisfied he wasn’t just humouring her. She settled back on her heels and slouched, only then realizing her emotional exhaustion.

“I want you to talk to Cain.”  
Kara looked back up at him incredulously. “Excuse me?”  
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m under the impression that Cain was particularly fond of you. Promoted you to CAG for disobeying orders.”  
“She’s clearly mad, Sir.” Kara smirked.   
Bill chuckled huskily. “In any case, you’re close with her. I want you to talk to her, see where her mind is at.”

Kara trained her features into a perfect mask of doubt. “I’m not sure she’ll be that inclined to talk to me anymore, Sir. First I betrayed her, then I arrested her.”

“Then at the very least we’ll see if she holds any grudge towards you and if that makes her a threat to you or the safety of this crew.” It was clear he was prepared for any resistance.   
“Permission to speak freely, Sir,” she said.  
“Granted.”  
Kara frowned sceptically. “Now I’m actually starting to doubt your sanity.”

Bill laughed and leaned back against his desk. “Do you accept the task or not?”  
Kara pouted, still doubtful. “I’m going to do more damage than good.”  
“You’ve done a lot of good so far,” Bill said, “I’d say you’ve already helped Cain as much or even more than you helped Lieutenant Agathon and Chief Tyrol.”

And he looked at her because this time, it was he who needed her to believe it.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kara interrogates Cain. Saul tries to reassure Bill he's a good man.

The sterile interrogation rooms were almost alive with misery. Kara imagined there were tears and screams soaked into the walls. Possibly blood too. The hatch turned and then Cain was standing in the open doorway, a drab, shallow thing between two towering Marines.

Kara watched the woman survey the room, eyes dark and sunken on her sallow face. This was not really how she looked at all. Kara’s mind insisted on exaggerating the woman’s ordinary appearance, because she didn’t look like a murderer.

A Marine indicated the chair opposite Kara.   
“I’d rather stand,” Cain insisted. Kara returned her gaze patiently. She did not have to wait long at all. Cain’s eyes shifted, her lips tensed and she went to sit down. She took her time, but only as a last ditch attempt at feigning control.

Kara smirked at her.   
“Really thought you’d stick to your guns there.”  
Cain rolled her head like a ship turning slowly against a storm and gazed darkly at the wall. Her hair fell over her face so Kara could see only where a small, dismal smile tugged the corners of her lips.  
“Maybe I’ll beg for my life too,” Cain said, voice low, “That’s how you can measure how far I’ve fallen.”

She had never really considered what Cain’s attitude would be, even when Bill was telling her what to expect. Kara would not accept that she was determined to die.  
“Cut the self pitying crap. You think you’re the only one who’s ever frakked up?”

Cain coughed a laugh. Her grin stretched eerily across her face and her eyes glimmered unnaturally in the pale light of the room. Kara had visions of how many times Helena’s eyes had seen war and how many battles she faced with a grin on her face.

“Spare me, Thrace,” Cain’s deep voice poured from her mouth like steam. “You’re not the first reckless hotshot with a penchant for anarchy and free flowing ambrosia because she’s complicated with a tortured past. You’re not the first person to exist outside the box and have everyone in the Colonies think she’s the only one crazy enough to ‘pull this off’.”

Kara grit her teeth as Cain leaned forward, lending an element of assault to her eyes that she felt stab like a knife.   
“You’re not the first person to surrender to a marathon of meaningless fraks to prove how frakked up you are. You are dangerously unoriginal, Captain, and your callow insights are not going to help me discover some startling personal truth about myself.”

The eyes of the fallen Admiral narrowed scathingly as she leaned back in her chair. “The only reason you’re here is because you accidently forgot that nothing impresses you, nothing surprises you. You forgot there’s nothing in the universe you haven’t seen or heard before and in that dismal failure to maintain that persona you idolized me. Now that I’ve let you down, you’re frantically trying to humanize me again before your whole sense of self starts to fall apart.”

It was almost flattering that the woman had spent time mounting an assessment of her. At the very least, it was evidence that Bill was right, and that somehow Kara was important to her, enough to consider the numerous ways in which her character was disappointing.

Kara was unconcerned as to why Cain bothered to think of her at all. The only thing that concerned her was that Cain wouldn’t be trying to hurt her, wouldn’t have attacked her so personally if she no longer cared. Kara couldn’t say what Cain’s feelings were exactly, only that she had feelings at all. And that was good. She could use that.

Kara let Cain’s words melt in the air for a while, waiting for a silence in which to make the woman truly hear her. Then Kara levelled her eyes at her. “Fisk is dead. Garner is dead. Apparently you shot your first XO.” It was very slight, nothing more than the barest twitch of her eyes, but Cain’s reaction was shattering.

Kara continued, “I’m thinking you’re all out of allies. No one is coming to your defence so why bother? Let those people from the Scylla have their revenge. Let them have their justice. Let Roslin throw you out an airlock.”

Planting her hands on the harsh metal table, Kara stood. She angled forward and felt a victorious thud in her chest at the way the folds in Helena’s sleeves shifted as she drew slightly away. Locked in the woman’s gaze, Kara waited until she saw Cain’s jaw clench and drilled the nail home.   
“Because that’s original.”

She didn’t look back as she left the room. She didn’t even leave orders with the Marines. Surely she could expect them to know what to do with a prisoner who was no longer needed for interrogation. On her way down the hall she recognized Major Shaw approaching from the opposite direction.

When Lee had appointed her as his XO he did so saying something about Cain’s legacy. All Kara knew of the girl was that Kendra Shaw hated her guts.

The woman didn’t so much as acknowledge her existence with a loathing glare as they passed. Kara thought maybe there was a rule in the XO handbook somewhere that stipulated the job came with a certain degree of contempt for one, Kara Thrace. There might be a photo of her grinning next to that particular entry, just so there was no mistaking where they should direct their disapproval.

 

* * *

 

With one hand, Saul gripped the bottom of the final list for the deckhand exchange. With the other, he idly massaged one of Ellen’s feet on his lap. For the time being, all of Galactica’s deckhands would exchange for those of the Pegasus. But there was no telling how long that time would be. Chief was unhappy, but understood the necessity of keeping those loyal to Cain away from the conscripted engineers.

He’d seen firsthand the violent outbursts that were likely to continue if something wasn’t done. Not all the former Pegasus crew were acting out. Stinger remained disciplined, now that he no longer had to take orders from Lee. And if the boy Adama was Stinger’s only problem, then there was at least one person out there who wasn’t treating Helena Cain like she was the frakking center of the universe.

Saul was getting sick of it. The impending trial worried him. It worried him because he could see that it worried Bill. The Old Man struggled with condemning a former Admiral of the Colonial Fleet. His respect for the military, his trust for and love for it refused to let him see the woman for what she was. Saul had concerns that, if the war Cain insisted on had come down to a shootout between the two Commanding Officers, Bill would have put down his gun and let the bitch stick a bullet between his eyes.

When the knock came at his door he nearly jumped. Ellen chuckled.   
“Tense? Perhaps I should be giving you the massage.” She smiled seductively.   
“It’s me, Saul,” Bill’s voice came muffled from the other side of the hatch. “Can I come in?”  
“Course,” Saul grunted.

Bill pushed open the door and stepped inside. Spotting Ellen he ducked his head sheepishly. “Oh. Pardon my intrusion.”  
Ellen slipped from the rack and put down her book. “It’s okay, Bill,” she said, conceding with a smile. “I can give you boys a moment.” She walked past, letting a comforting hand linger on the Admiral’s shoulder before she let herself from the room.

Saul put down his files and got up to get a drink from the bottle on his desk. He poured two glasses as Bill sat down.   
“I hear you let Kara talk to Cain,” Saul said, twisting the cap back onto the bottle. He pushed a glass towards Bill and then took a seat himself.   
Bill gripped the glass but didn’t take it.   
“One of my bright ideas,” he joked.

Saul rasped a laugh. “And what about Roslin. Any closer to formalizing this trial?”  
“It will most likely be a military panel.” Bill said so as if it had no meaning. Saul watched him take a drink and gasp from the burn. He felt as reluctant as Bill looked.

“Lee’s been reading Cain’s logs,” the Old Man went on, “I’m hoping it will give us a clearer picture of the kind of leader she was.”  
Saul scoffed light heartedly. “The kind of leader who shoots her XO at point blank for refusing to send pilots into a hopeless battle.”  
“I made that same call.”

Saul looked up at him, smirking. “To shoot me in the head?”  
Bill laughed, but his eyes sank tragically once again. He perched a fingertip on the rim of the glass and eyed the amber contents.   
“To fight. To fight a hopeless battle. If it weren’t for Roslin…”  
Something in Saul’s gut twisted. He refused to believe Bill was only the man he was because of Laura Roslin.

“You could never do the things Helena Cain did.” His voice burned like the drink he hadn’t yet touched. “You would never have killed innocent people like that.”  
Bill seemed unfazed by his passion. “I almost did. I almost abandoned half the fleet to fend for themselves. And why?” His mouth twisted into a self depreciating grimace. “Because of some toy arrow? Because Roslin went behind my back? Because she corrupted my best pilot?”

Bill knocked back the rest of his rot, set the glass on the desk and slouched. “Turned out I was wrong about all of that too.”  
Saul blinked. He couldn’t hear this. He couldn’t see his friend in this much pain. He couldn’t see him wallowing in self doubt like he’d seen him before, years ago. He wasn’t going to let that happen again.

“You were looking out for the fleet,” he insisted, “They proved to be a liability at the time.”  
“A civilian ship is always a liability. Always. Cain understood that. She had a mission to carry out. A civilian ship would have jeopardized that mission.”

“What mission?” Saul erupted. He took his drink and planted his elbows on the desk. “Who gave her a frakking mission? And what exactly was she defending? What Colony was she serving by attacking the Cylons alone?” He pointed emphatically, “It was a stupid decision.”

“One I made.”  
Saul wouldn’t let his frustration confirm Bill’s ridiculous self pity. “Bill. You’re going in circles. Helena Cain ordered the murder of innocent people under no immediate threat from the Cylons, or anyone else for that matter. There was no need for it.”

Bill sighed and leaned back in his chair. His head tilted back, pulled by some memory that weighed heavy on his heart and textured his voice with despair. “That man we left on the Ragnar Anchorage. Doral. We left him there because Baltar said he was a Cylon. We had no further proof than that.”

Bill was in his own cloud of helplessness. The sight of him seared tears into Saul’s eyes he refused to shed.   
The Old Man’s voice crackled exhaustedly. “And it turns out Baltar’s Cylon detector is faulty, or he would have been able to identify Sharon as a Cylon before she was able to shoot me. Now, we know Doral is a Cylon after all, but Gods Saul.” When Bill looked up at him, Saul had to swallow. And it was a jagged, twisted lump of stone that squeezed down his gullet and thumped into his gut.

“Baltar’s word. That’s all I needed to make my decision to leave a man for dead.”

Saul could only look at him. He wished furiously that he had something better than his mute gaze to offer him. His heart tightened and he wanted madly to hit something.

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gaius can't understand what Six is so happy about. Lee tells Kara what he learned from Cain's logs.

She sat on the floor this time, leaning against the foot of her bed. Her bare feet were flat against the carpet, and her eyes squinted distantly through her narrow framed glasses. It was curious to Gaius that she needed them as there were other Six models that did not. He could remember the Six that called herself Shelley Godfrey had worn glasses.

He wondered if they had been made with faulty sight or if it came after they were activated. He wondered if they volunteered for the procedure or if it was assigned to them as part of their mission. He wondered why Gina had not been made a Sleeper Agent like Boomer, and thought of how ridiculous it was that a pair of glasses was all that was needed to create a convincing cover identity.

“Gina,” he said, with reassuring firmness. She was responding well lately. Sometimes he could have lucid conversations with her about her day, about the fleet, and other little things like the food she was provided.

But he had already made it clear that today they were going to talk about what she had said during his last visit. Her eyes had turned away from him, the light that could radiate from her smile snuffed out like he had pressed fingers to a burning wick.

“I want to know what you meant,” he said, shifting in his chair. He twirled the pen and felt the clipboard on his lap. He hated to be so official with her, but it was his job. He still wanted to help the fleet. He still wanted to do his part to protect Humanity from the Cylon threat. He needed to do that.

“Gina, I want to know…what did you mean when you said that you thought you knew what it meant.”  
The Cylon suddenly smiled. Her eyes were still focused on the wall. Gaius watched her, wondering if she’d heard him or had retreated somewhere. Somewhere that made her happy.

He was about to address her again when she said, “Being a Cylon. I thought I understood what it meant that I was a Cylon. I thought I understood how that made me different from a human. I thought that was all I needed.”

It was certainly hard for him to imagine. To be aware of himself as a machine, a construct; it was something he could never fully appreciate. But to be a machine built specifically to behave, in every way, like a human, it made him shiver fearfully. It scared him how much he hoped he would one day wake up and discover he was a Cylon. As if being human was all a bad dream. That wasn’t how he was supposed to feel.

“You believe human and Cylon are different?” Gaius queried.   
“I couldn’t understand what was happening to me. This…irresistible yearning. I thought maybe that was how I was supposed to respond. It happens to humans. We were built to imitate humans perfectly. It was just part of my programming. I was just responding the way I was built to.”

Gaius knew she was talking about something that happened onboard the Pegsus. He just could not think what it was. He considered it have something to do with living with humans. Perhaps it had something to do with the attack and her emotional response to it.

The vision he alone could see stepped around behind him. The red of her dress and the light of her hair set the room with a vibrant glow. Her eyes were on Gina, her face glowing with the amusement of some revelation he had not yet worked out.   
“Love,” she said, turning to him. “She’s talking about love.”

“Love?” His voice came out spluttered with bewilderment and Gina’s eyes flashed. When Gaius looked down at her she was tensed against the edge of the bed like a startled animal. Gaius knew then that his Six was right. And Gina seemed irritated that he had figured her out so quickly.

“If I was programmed to feel love then surely part of my programming would help me carry out my mission despite it. But I couldn’t fight that feeling.” She drew her knees against her chest and hugged her shins. “It felt…so good. But I had a mission. I trusted…I had faith in…”

She winced, her known vocabulary falling risibly short of the feelings she wanted to express. Gaius wondered if there were even words to express the way a Cylon could feel. Gina’s brow furrowed mournfully, a helpless quiver breaking the tone of her voice.

“I delayed it as long as I could. I couldn’t ask her…I couldn’t ask her for the codes I needed.” Her eyes closed, lids pushing the tears from her lashes to trail down her cheeks. “That…idiot girl. I had no excuse. I had to use the information she gave me.” She frowned with resolve, but a haze of regret still veiled her eyes. “I completed my mission.”

Gaius looked from Gina to Six. One face in misery, the other brimming with wonderment and delight. Gaius didn’t know how Six could look so happy when the woman before them was so obviously tortured. He looked away from her with a spit of disgust and impatience and tried to connect gently to Gina.

“I’m sorry, who did you love?”  
She didn’t answer.   
“Who did you love, Gina?”  
Gaius could only watch the woman bow her head behind her arms and cry.

 

* * *

 

Sending Kara to talk to Cain was another of his father’s decisions Lee had disagreed with. It was not that he doubted Kara’s ability to reason with Cain, only that Cain wasn’t something Kara could come at in the cockpit of her Viper. Bill always turned to Starbuck when he was looking for a way to defy the universe itself, and he was confusing her potential as a pilot with the significance of her relationship with Helena.

His mind changed as he read the logs. At first he thought his eyes were tired, that he had misread the delicate script. The more he read the more he understood and it became clear that Kara was exactly the person to reach Cain. Kara just needed to be made aware of something. She was intelligent and she could read people perfectly. And maybe she would have been able to work it out eventually, but time was not on her side. She needed to get through to Helena now.

When the Marine announced Kara’s arrival, he ordered her sent in. She didn’t look happy.   
“Enjoying your new power are we?” She said impatiently. “What’s so important you couldn’t tell me over the phone?”

Lee had Cain’s logs out on the table in front of him. He had been reading from the sofa, and he saw the glint in Kara’s eyes when she spotted the drink and bottle amongst them.  
She scoffed and he knew she was thinking he was just like the bratty little boy who found the diary of a girl in his class.

“There’s something I think you should know about Cain,” Lee said, keeping his cool under Kara’s contemptuous glare. He was determined to give the former commander of the Pegasus the respect and help she deserved and wasn’t about to let Kara convince him he was doing anything less.

“What?” Kara folded her arms.   
“The Cylon, Gina. It’s very subtle,” Lee said, looking back at the log open in front of him, “I mean, she doesn’t draw attention to it, but…” He hesitated. His fingers spread across the page. He thought for a moment that he could feel the emotions and the love that went into the words he had read.

He could see Helena sitting at her desk, pen in her hand, smile on her lips as she talked about the Systems Analyst who was slowly proving herself to be less a bureaucratic hindrance and more of a bright young woman of intelligence and decent conversation.

He could think that being able to report on the progress Gina Inviere was making was something she took delight in, especially on days when she had very little good news on which to report. And then gradually, she no longer bothered to speak of Gina in terms of the work she did. Only that Gina’s presence was one of the few things that truly reassured her. Comforted her.

“Well, gee, Lee, don’t keep me waiting.”  
“Kara, I think…” He started, irritated by her pressure. He calmed down quickly and looked up at her, “I think Helena Cain and the Cylon were…involved.”

There was very little change to the frown on Kara’s face.   
“That explains a lot.”  
“If,” Lee began, ignoring the implications of Kara’s reaction, “If Cain was in love with that Cylon, discovering her true identity, the extent to which she had been used in a plot to wipe out all humanity…”  
“Well, you’re certainly sympathetic all of a sudden.”

Lee flinched. “I’ve got to know her.”  
“Reading these logs?” Kara teased, coming forward.   
“The safety of her crew, protecting every last man, it was everything to her,” Lee insisted, becoming angry.   
“Until she fell for a pretty skinjob.” Kara stuck her hands on her hips and puffed air through a grin. “And she calls me unoriginal.”

He had no idea what she was talking about. But he was too angry to care where she was getting this attitude from. “The Olympic Carrier.”  
“What?”

He could feel his blood surging hotly under his skin. Sickness gathered in his gut the same way it had done all those months ago.  
“Hundreds of people, Kara. It’s going to haunt me for the rest of my life.” He just stared at her until he could see the change in her eyes. They softened and she looked regrettable, because he could act like he had recovered from it, that he had legitimized it in his head, but he would never truly be able to forgive himself.

Lee shook his head and looked down at the log. “Cain, she will be feeling remorse. She will be feeling regret. But there are things your mind does, things to help you cope with what you’ve done. Maybe convincing herself that she’s a monster…”

They were interrupted when Shaw announced herself after a brisk knock at his hatch. He had told her to report to him when she returned from Galactica.   
“Come in,” Lee said. He watched the way Kara’s eyes followed the woman into the room. It was no secret they despised each other. Lee knew Kendra saw Kara as someone who had no respect for the values of the military. He would tell her she was wrong, but Kara did nothing to lend any credence to his words.

“So how is our prisoner?” Kara asked before Lee could ask Shaw about her visit with Cain.  
“Excuse me?” His XO pitched her voice at a note of detestation, and slowly turned her head to where Kara stood off to the side.  
“You went to see her. I wasn’t aware you two were friends.” Kara swaggered close and looked the girl up and down. “It’s fascinating to see one alive.”

Lee didn’t have time for this. He didn’t need Kara’s immaturity today.   
“That will be all, Captain,” he said.  
Kara leaned closer, her chin almost resting on Shaw’s shoulder, and sneered. “Or maybe you’re the rebound girl.”  
“Kara!” Lee snapped, appalled.   
Kara tossed a look over her shoulder at the pile of logs. “Tell me when you get to that bit, Lee.” With nothing left to be said, she left the room.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gaius forces Laura Roslin and Bill Adama to question their perceptions. TRIGGER WARNING: Please skip this chapter to avoid description of sexual assault.

When Gaius returned to the lab he shut the door quickly. Eyes burning, it was only then he released the sob that had been clinging to the back of his throat, sticky and foul. He coughed it up like bile and went to his desk, leaning on it for support with rigid arms. He hung his head and fought the compulsion to throw up, but winced when Six touched his back.

“Gaius…”

He’d never heard her sound so concerned. He didn’t think any amount of comfort she could offer could remedy the sickness he felt.   
“I don’t understand it,” he muttered pitifully. He sniffed and glared hard at the floor. “How could she do that?” Six’s hand caressed to his shoulder and he looked up at her desperately. “They were lovers.”

Six cupped his face but he turned away from her, grimacing and putting distance between them. He ran his hands over his face and through his hair.

“They were lovers,” Six recounted, “And that makes Helena Cain even more inhuman for what she did to her.”  
Gaius wanted to scream. He shut his eyes tightly and gripped his fingers into fists. “Does it? Or does it make her more _human_?”  
“What do you mean?” Six asked, and Gaius flinched at the bite of anger to her tone.

He turned to her helplessly. “You. Or…her. The woman I loved. When I found out she was a Cylon I…” He coughed on a sudden gagging reflex and covered his mouth with his hand. Six’s eyes softened again and her head inclined apathetically.

Gaius swallowed. “When I found out I was devastated. All the Colonies…all those people…She used me!” He jabbed his fingers aggressively to his chest. His vision blurred with tears so he quickly wiped his eyes. Six just watched him, the pain on her face making him ache.

“I felt so betrayed. I felt so…worthless. I was responsible. I was responsible for…” He shook his head suddenly. “It was her! She made me! I didn’t know!”  
Six winced and reached out. “Gaius…”  
“No!” He thrust out his hand to stop her from approaching. “No.” He pressed out his palm again and then hugged himself.

For a long time he was silent. Six could only watch him shivering in a corner. When he spoke again his voice was barely a whisper.   
“A bomb went off. I was knocked out. She was gone when I awoke. I couldn’t find her.” He was turning slowly, like a child, back and forth. “Before you showed up I thought…I thought what I would do if I ever saw her again. What would I do…?”

“Gaius,” Six said gently. When the man didn’t tense she approached him slowly. “You think you would have hurt me? You think you could have done what Cain did?” She tenderly stroked his cheek with the back of her fingers. “There is no way. You are a good soul, Gaius. You couldn’t…”

He coiled away from her with a snarl of rage. His eyes were like flames, red and accusing. Six looked at him and for the first time he saw fear and confusion in her eyes. Gaius didn’t care.  
“Are you trying to tell me that I couldn’t hurt anyone? Are you honestly trying to tell me that there is no way I could hurt a living soul?”

Spit flew between his teeth with the savagery behind his voice. He trembled. “Have you forgotten what happened on Kobol? Have you? Have you forgotten what I did that _made me a man_?”  
The woman he had come to trust above all others for guidance and support backed away.   
“Don’t you dare tell me what a good soul I am. Don’t you dare. If it weren’t for me, none of this would have even happened.” He threw his arms out and stared at her, feeling his heart burning as though his blood were acid.

The sob broke as the tears he had tried desperately to hold back fell freely down his face. It was too much to know how startlingly similar he was to Helena Cain. They had both been used by the woman they loved as part of a plan to wipe out all humanity. The only difference was that Gina was around long enough for Cain to react. Gaius had barely accepted what his lover was telling him before an explosion robbed him of that chance.

And if he was capable of killing a man, he was capable of anything.

“There’s something here.”  
“What?” Gaius croaked. He sniffed and wiped his nose as he looked up. Six was standing at his desk, her eyes cast down at something.

He walked over to her and saw the package sitting there with his name on it. Curiously he picked it up and turned it over in his hands. There was no other mark on the brown paper than his name. There was no way to tell who it was from or how they gained access to his room.

He tore it open, his ordinary caution forgotten in his heightened emotional state. Revealed to him was a disc in a black case. He went to his computer and pushed in the disc, exploring the contents. A video file came up and he opened it.

As his heart clenched and his breath stopped, Six leaned over his shoulder. The images flickered in their eyes, the sounds burned their ears. Gaius leaned over his dustbin and threw up.   
Six held his back as he came back up, spitting and wheezing. She didn’t need to tell him. But then, he didn’t near to hear it. He knew, whatever man he was, he was not capable of the horrors he just saw.

“If Roslin can ignore this,” said Six, shuddering, “Then she’s more a monster than the beasts on this video.”

It was only after he was sure he’d removed the smell of vomit from the room that he contacted the President. He invited the Admiral along too, for the part he would play in deciding Cain’s fate. They were not at all enthusiastic about coming to see him. Roslin took her time, and even when he knew her raptor had landed it was almost an hour before she and Adama graced him with their presence.

Immediately Roslin struck him with a glare of scepticism as she stalked into the room. Adama was close behind her, like some big, loyal guard dog.   
“Madame President, Admiral, thank you for taking the time to see me on such short notice.” Gaius bowed his head politely.  
“Mhm. This had better be worth it Dr Baltar,” Roslin said, voice like dripping oil.

Gaius willed his features to keep steady. Six gave him a nod.   
“If you would direct your attention to the monitor,” he pointed to his computer screen. Roslin and Adama moved to his desk. The two of them exchanged looks of slight amusement, as if they had made some bet on what he had to show them.

“Madame President, how do we judge a sentient being?”  
“Dr Baltar…” Roslin sighed wearily.   
Gaius ignored her and persevered. “We might ask, can it think, can it feel? Animal rights activists define sentience as the ability to experience pleasure and pain. On these criteria alone we should allow that the Cylon prisoner has at least the sentience of an animal and is deserving of the same rights.”

Six grunted with disgust and Gaius cringed, emotions pulling tightly on his throat.   
“I understand you previously acknowledged that Cylons could feel pain when Captain Thrace tortured the Cylon Leoben for the location of a supposed bomb in the fleet,” he said.

Laura’s expression changed only in the way her eyes looked fierce. She smiled apprehensively, her voice delicately articulated.   
“How do you know about that?”  
“Faceless Marines may begin to look invisible to you, Madame President, but they do remember and they do talk.” Gaius felt a small swell of victory when the corner of Laura’s smile twitched slightly.

“You are talking to the President of the Colonies,” Adama said between grinding teeth. “Show respect.”  
Roslin merely held up her hand and squared herself on Gaius. “Dr Baltar, the pain a Cylon may or may not feel is still only a programmed response.”  
Gaius cocked his head. “Similar to the way the human nervous system is programmed to react to sensory data.”  
Laura smiled impatiently. “If this is the best you’ve got…”  
“Just getting started actually,” Gaius said calmly. He leaned over and switched on the screen. Reaching for a button on the keyboard, he started the video.

It was the sound that alerted them first. The growling, the grunting and the drawn, wailing sobbing. It blended together the way scenes from a battle became a blur of blood and bodies. Gaius watched their faces drain.

Even hearing it made Gaius sick. The worst was when all he could hear was Gina. Screaming between breaths that came in rasping sobs. And on it went, every second like a minute, every minute seeming an hour.

Roslin looked ashen. Her jaw was locked but her muscles clenched around her lips. The light from the screen trembled in her glasses. Adama had already looked away and Gaius could see he was torn between protecting Roslin from needing to see more of the video and overstepping professional bounds.

But Roslin watched. Just over two long minutes had ticked over before she whispered,   
“Turn it off.”  
“Why? Does it make you uncomfortable?” Gaius elevated his voice as she moved away. “Why should it? They’re only bashing a machine, a thing no more like a navigational computer or a power generator.”

He grabbed the screen and turned it to face her again so that when she turned around she was confronted with the scenes again. “Those men are not raping a woman. Those aren’t the tortured screams of a woman you hear as she’s repeatedly and brutally violated for no other reason than to amuse those soldiers.”

“Dr Baltar, for frak sake, turn that frakking thing off!” Adama barked savagely, making Roslin jump.   
Gaius calmly switched off the recording and then looked up at Roslin. She would not meet his gaze.  
Gaius knew she would listen to him now. “Anyone who thinks that is an acceptable way to treat a living, thinking, feeling creature has no right to call themselves human.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kara confronts Gina about her relationship with Cain. Saul reflects on what Bill means to him.

The Cylon took a step back when the Kara entered the room. She watched Kara as though the pilot’s gaze had turned her to stone. It was surprise, Kara knew. People only gave that look when they were expecting somebody else. Then, Gina wasn’t really a person.

“You,” it said.   
Kara chuffed. “Me.” She checked out its room, casually sliding her fingers into her back pockets.   
“You’re the one who saved me.”  
“Yep. I’m a regular knight in shining armour.” Kara put a hand on her hip, squaring on her from the middle of the room. Gina still hung by the bedside table, slotted perfectly between it and the wall.

The Cylon’s eyes darted to the door and back to Kara. Her fingers pressed the edges of the wall, backing herself into the corner. Kara felt a sting of sympathy irritate her chest. She had never seen this model’s face look so scared of her. It was unsettling.

“What are you doing here?” Gina asked finally, her voice shaking.   
Kara scoffed. She couldn’t stand seeing her look so pathetic. She pulled up a chair and sat down with her legs up on the bed.

“Wouldya come away from the wall?” Kara gestured. Gina looked uncertainly between her and the bed. Kara jabbed emphatically.   
“Sit!”  
Jumping, Gina quickly scrambled onto the bed. She hunched herself against the pillows as she drew her knees close and held her toes. She eyed Kara nervously.

Kara chuckled and didn’t care if it was insensitive or inappropriate. She wondered if Gina would even be able to handle the conversation Kara wanted to have with her.   
“Let’s get right to it,” she said.   
Gina watched her expectantly.   
“I’m here to talk about your girlfriend. Or maybe that should be ex-girlfriend.”

Kara waited, carefully gauging the Cylon’s reaction, her keen eyes prepared to catch any subtle shift and twitch she made.   
Gina didn’t react at all, which was telling enough. “What did you want to know?” she asked.  
Kara smirked. She had not given much credence to the machine’s psychological state, but had to admit she had thought she might have at least flinched. That she didn’t impressed Kara.

“Far be it from me to doubt the sincerity of a Cylon who says she’s in love. Good friend of mine stakes his life on it every day.”  
At this Kara noticed Gina clench her jaw. She saw the flex of her throat muscles as she swallowed. With a small bite of amusement, Kara realized it hurt her to learn of a Cylon who had made her relationship with a human work by being honest.

Kara would pour salt but needed the Cylon to talk and that wouldn’t happen if she got too emotional and defensive.  
“So I’m going to ask you and I’m going to believe what you say,” she said. Gina braced herself, tightening her grip on her feet.   
“Was it real? Your love for Helena Cain. Was that real?”

“Why would you want to know that? What difference does it make to you?” Her shoulders lifted as she spoke, head turning by the barest degree. Her eyes had broken the contact she had been determined to keep. The machine, the creature, it, was uncomfortable. Whether it was because Kara had made demands on her personal feelings or the integrity of the Cylon coding was as yet unclear. It wasn’t something Kara particularly cared about anyway.

“Let me ask you another question then,” she said tactfully, “Do you care that she’s facing the death penalty?”  
Gina visibly flinched and her arms slipped more tightly around her shins, her chin sinking lower behind her knees. The light flared faintly in the moisture welling along her lower lashes.

“She hurt you,” Kara said gently, voice touched with empathy she had never intended but did nothing to hide. “You hurt her but what she did to you…”  
Gina’s eyes returned to Kara’s, glimmering in surprise.

Kara waited a moment, simply to recover from her own unexpected emotional difficulty. “Now I get not wanting to give the bitch the satisfaction. I get that. But when you knew she wasn’t going to kill you, that there wasn’t going to be an end, why didn’t you try to bargain? Why didn’t you tell them anything?”

Kara opened herself as much to a Cylon as she ever would as she spoke her next words.   
“How could you possibly be that devoted to the Cylon end game that you could endure all that? Because that’s where I have trouble believing you had genuine feelings for Cain. If the Cylon mission was worth all that pain, then what could she have ever meant to you?”

“I thought…” Gina said suddenly and frantically.   
Kara had not counted on feeling this dependent on the Cylon’s answer. She needed to know. She needed to know how the machines could claim to possess human feelings, that their capacity for emotion was no less than theirs and yet abuse and take them so cruelly for granted. She was sick of the feeling that another person she trusted, another person she cared about would be a lie.

“I thought it was just a program.”  
Kara blinked, disappointed. Gina winced in frustration and the urgency to find a way to make Kara understand.   
“When I was first integrated into human society I understood who I was, what I was, and all the ways I was similar to but so different from humans.”

Kara narrowed her eyes, listening patiently and Gina continued with renewed confidence, pain lingering in the lines around her eyes.  
“I was a Cylon. I was data and programming. I had my own thoughts and my own quirks that formed what humans call a personality but I knew it was ingenuine. I knew that my feelings and thoughts were only the product of chips and wires.”

She’d never heard a Cylon talk like this before. They were supposed to try and convince you of how human they were. They were supposed to display an arrogant degree of self deception, denying their own origins and the mechanical construct their existence relied upon. Kara had trouble seeing where this was going.

“That’s what I believed when I was tasked with my mission.” Her voice had started to waver. Tears crawled slowly down the delicate and perfectly sculpted curve of her cheeks. “I was a simulation. And I embraced it.”

Kara watched the Cylon laugh to herself.   
“But I met Helena.” Her shoulders shrugged and her tone lifted almost joyfully. “And she made me feel things,” her eyes shut slowly and she began to run her hands up her arms, “so intensely. She could…”

Kara watched, enthralled by her movements as Gina started to shift and bend to the visions in her head.   
“…touch me, and I would forget everything about myself. Eventually she could do it just by smiling at me. There were times she could make me believe, for a few…exquisite moments…that what I felt had nothing to do with a program.”

When her eyes opened again Kara tensed her jaw. The woman’s eyes were so vivid and sharp, and Kara understood with undeniable clarity the extent to which she and Helena had affected each other.

“So you ask me, why I didn’t try to bargain? Why didn’t I try to help myself? I felt betrayed.” Gina frowned and bared her teeth, anger quivering in her voice. “Everything I believed about myself, how I worked, none of it was true. What I felt was real. It was real and inescapable and I knew that if they killed me I would just download into a new body and still feel everything. If I was going to give them a reason to kill me, I wanted to make damn sure I wasn’t coming back. And the Resurrection ship was close. Always close.”

More tears trailed down Gina’s face.   
“You still love her.” Kara realized  
“I want it to stop,” Gina insisted desperately, edging forward as if Kara could somehow provide a solution. “I don’t want to feel this way anymore.”  
Kara bowed her head and stood up, turning away. She was almost to the door when she turned around, catching the painfully frantic look in the Cylon’s eyes.

“You think dying will make everything end? How do you know what’s waiting for you?”  
Gina’s head sank. It was not something she had wanted to hear. Perhaps she had considered it before but wanted naively to believe in oblivion.

Kara put her hand on the door. She felt compelled to offer her a consolation. “The only way you’re going to stop that pain is by accepting who you are not, and embracing the person you are. You might not know who that is right now, but she’s there for you to discover and this time, don’t let anyone tell you who that person is supposed to be.”

She made the mistake of looking back at her. Gina’s eyes shone with gratitude and it made Kara want to scream. She opened the door quickly.   
“Help her.”   
Kara paused.   
“Don’t let them execute her.”   
Without a word, Kara left and wondered if the Cylon would be crying as she departed down the hall.

 

* * *

 

“A recording.” Saul spat and shook his head. “And how did Baltar get it?”

Bill was looking more grave than usual. Saul hoped that he could keep the man from wallowing too deeply in the failure of humanity he had just witnessed and remind him that times of War were hectic and brutal. That the battlefield was not the place where one could see the true nature of humanity, but its fragility. A man sacrificed his humanity to see it flourish and survive in others.

Bill wanted to be able to save it all. Every last soul. The universe just didn’t work that way. Saul vowed long ago that what Bill could not do, he would give everything for. A man who believed so strongly in the human spirit could not be sacrificed. Saul would die protecting that.

“Reluctantly, he told us it was delivered to him anonymously. I wonder if it’s worth an investigation.” Bill was looking at the floor, his brow drawn with worry. Saul knew at once what troubled him.   
“How’s Roslin?” he asked gently.   
Bill smiled grimly. He looked up at his friend with regret. “I saw her back to the Raptor. She insists she’s fine. I know she’s shaken.”

“Gods dammit,” Saul grunted slowly. “I knew that Cain was trouble. Fisk was reaching out to us when he told me what she did to her XO. I knew he wasn’t joking. We should have done something then.”  
“It would not have stopped what happened to the Cylon,” Bill said.  
“No. But maybe…” Saul was surprised at how frantic his own voice had sounded. He realized with a huff of amusement that he felt guilty for letting down a fellow XO. “Ah, dammit.”

Bill arched his eyebrows and smiled at him. Saul just spat air in annoyance and sat down on the couch.   
“Startin’ to sound like you. Tryin’ to take on the responsibility of people beyond help. Fisk is dead. The Cylon was frakked up before we got there. And it’s those soldiers involved who are going to be the ones…” He smiled thinly and hung his head helplessly.

Bill joined him on the couch, easing into the old brown cushioning and reflecting Saul’s posture.  
“It’s okay, Saul. I’d already thought about that. You didn’t add to my anxiety.”  
Saul chuckled. He wondered if Bill was being honest or kind.

“We can identify at least some of the soldiers involved from the recording, as difficult as it will be to watch again,” said Bill, “But it will do more damage to confront them than not. I’ll see to it Lee is made aware of the soldiers to watch out for, monitor their behaviour.”

Bill was right. He couldn’t suspend them. He couldn’t discharge them. For the same reason he couldn’t discharge the soldiers who accompanied Thorne when he assaulted Boomer, or Sharon or whatever the frak the Cylon called herself. Once someone was punished for assaulting a Cylon it set the precedent for Cylon rights. Only living things had rights. The fleet would never accept a Cylon was a living thing. There would be chaos.

“The trial will be tomorrow,” said Bill. His voice drifted from him like a cold, ghostly spectre released from his body. It didn’t leave, but was sucked right back inside him with his next breath. Saul squinted with concern.

“Does Cain know?” Saul asked.   
Bill sighed and clutched his hands together. “Kara’s on her way to see her now.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kara let's Helena know about her impending trial. Laura visits Bill to announce she will not be attending the trial.

Kara’s reflection stepped up to meet her in the reinforced window of Cain’s cell. The former soldier was lying on the cot. Gazing at the ceiling, her hands were folded under her head, elbows bent. She had one knee raised as if all she were doing were waiting casually for an instant meal to finish heating.

A Marine let open the hatch and Kara went inside. Visions returned to her of being locked in a cell on Pegasus. She had waited on a cot and Cain had walked into the room. Kara thought she was coming to pass sentence. Instead the woman had cried on her lap.

Kara looked at Cain now, seeing the same shade of uncertainty in her eyes she had seen then. She approached the bed and stopped in the middle of the floor, watching her resist acknowledging her presence.

“Went to visit your ex today.”  
A smirk broke across her Cain’s lips like a blade slicing through flesh. She sat up and tossed her hair as she looked up at Kara expectantly. Kara wondered if that was the reaction she was expecting or if she was still losing.

“We had a nice chat,” she said.  
Cain’s features soured impatiently. “If you’ve come to ask if I have any regrets…”  
“See,” Kara interrupted. She cocked her head. “Now why would you assume I would give a frak if you had any regrets about the way you treated your girlfriend? She’s a machine, right? Why should the idea of regret even enter our minds?”

A gentle quiver affected the skin under Cain’s eyes. Her body was suddenly stiff and her eyes glared darkly. When she first met Cain, Kara had accepted her authority in an instant. Her presence was vivid, her stance commanding and she articulated her voice in uncompromising tones Kara couldn’t negotiate. In Cain she could invest her trust.

And it was only typical that the one person she had respected and admired and trusted so completely in that way should turn out to be a heartless, frakked up joke. The pain was worse than if she had turned out to be a Cylon. Cain was a failure as a human.

Kara’s voice darkened, and light scattered from her face.   
“Because despite everything, you can’t stop seeing her as a person. You can’t stop seeing her as a person who hurt you, who broke your heart.”

A layer of emotion lined her throat. “But you’re an Admiral. Half your men were just annihilated by that thing and her kind, and you had to protect your crew. You had to show them that the incomprehensible loss they had suffered meant something to you.”

The woman sitting before her was shrinking, fading, as though she were being engulfed by a cloak of shadow.

“She was the enemy,” Kara went on. “Your men were depending on you, looking to you for answers, all of them angry and in pain and wanting an explanation, wanting to know why everything and everyone they ever held dear was in seconds destroyed so heartlessly, by a machine. You couldn’t let them down.”

Light shuddered in Cain’s eyes and her lips tightened.   
Kara pressed.

“You had to act.”  
“Shut up…”   
Kara barely detected the voice at all, but she ignored it anyway. “Then you couldn’t stop. There was no going back after that.”

“Get out.”   
Kara refused to hear Cain. Her skin was crawling with the demand her heart was making to get her feelings out.

“That’s the reason you’re just lying here. This is a way to end it. This is a way to stop yourself. Well frak you. I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let you off that easy. You’re gonna live and you’re going to have to face everything you’ve done. Because if you deserve to die for what you did, then there’s a whole frak load of people who should be packed into that airlock with you. And humanity just can’t afford to indulge our collective guilty conscience right now.”

Cain’s eyes stared, darkening like oil bleeding in water. Hatred oozed between her teeth and Kara turned on her heels and strode to the door. The Marine unlocked it and as she held it open she tossed one last look back at Cain.   
“Your trial is set for tomorrow.” And she left, thinking the anguish in Helena’s eyes would be the last thing she would see of her, and it was going to haunt her for the rest of her life.

 

* * *

 

Bill had lived inside nightmares. He had stepped into worlds where sense and reason had no place, where the horizon was just the line you could see beyond the pieces of broken men, women and children twisted over bloodstained ruins. There were faces always looking at him, stretched and mutated by the haze of horror. He’d seen his own hands shining with blood.

Bill never thought his nightmares would change. But he had not closed his eyes last night before they began. Grotesque figures, writhing and growling and mauling. A pale body crushed beneath them. Over and over and over again.

There was no sense. There was no reason. Bill didn’t sleep. Even before the clearance of her cancer, Bill had never seen Laura look worse. She sat neatly, at perfect angles, knees together, ankles together, hands folded in her lap. Everything about her was drawn tightly and covered.

Her body was turned away from him, eyes cast somewhere towards the other side of his quarters. What she saw there he didn’t know. The grimace on her face pretended to be a smile.

Cain’s trial was scheduled to begin in ten minutes and they should be leaving. But Laura hadn’t said a word since she came into the room. He opened his hatch for her, she walked carefully across the threshold and sat down far away from him. Bill didn’t approach too soon, or too close.

He watched her silently, noting with some distress the way her fingers clenched and unclenched over the fabric of her pants.

“I won’t be attending the trial,” she said after a time. Immediately she hitched, tensed and valiantly resisted a sudden surge of emotion.   
Bill had already figured as much. “That won’t be a problem, Madame President.” He decided she would appreciate him keeping things formal.

“I don’t…pretend to know…what it’s like to be a soldier,” she spoke gently, not yet looking his way. “I wouldn’t say I was able to imagine…how it feels…to be in a situation where my life and the lives of others depended on my immediate reaction.”

Bill felt as though his insides were being ripped out through some unseen wound. Laura was a teacher. She was a teacher because she was optimistic and full of hope for a bright future. She had never thought her life would end up here, deciding the fate of thousands with the stroke of a pen, mediating the egos of Army Leaders capable of blowing each other and the last of the human race to atoms in seconds, confronting the brutality and the horror one person could inflict on another.

This wasn’t supposed to be her world. These were not supposed to be her nightmares. Bill wished he could reach into her head and take hold of them, lock them away in his own skull if he had to.

“But I understand,” she said and then looked down at her lap. When her eyes lifted again they stared determinedly ahead. “I understand that War can be disorienting. It can be difficult to know…if the choices we make are right or wrong, but worse…we can’t know if it is really us making the decision.”

Bill could cry for how lost she looked when her eyes finally met his. He ached everywhere.   
“Who was I?” she asked him quietly. “Who was I that day I told you to kill Helena Cain? Without trial? Without investigation? Just…take her life…like that.” She waved a hand listlessly in the air.

Bill bit down a growl of desperation. He couldn’t let her think like this but he couldn’t think of anything to say.

“Something had to be done,” Laura said firmly, resolve and strength returning partially to her voice. “Difficult choices have to be made. The welfare of the many outweighs that of the few. For example, I can’t give the Cylon Gina the justice she deserves because it would cause the complete social collapse of the fleet.”

It looked like it hurt her face to smile. Bill wished he could do more than just stand there.   
“I know you will judge fairly,” Laura said, “But I just don’t trust myself. I won’t be able to look at her and not see a monster. I won’t.”

Bill nodded and Laura relaxed. But as he took a step toward her, intending to lay a comforting hand on her shoulder, she drew away. Regret froze in her elegant features as her body went rigid with shock. Bill knew she had been surprised at her own reaction to the potential contact. But he also knew that she did trust him. He knew she knew he would never hurt her.

But she was afraid. She didn’t know what the future held. She didn’t know what this war with the Cylons would bring. She didn’t know if, at some point, Bill would have to make a choice; a terrible, horrifying choice. There was no telling what either of them were capable of.

Laura had already orchestrated a coup against him. Bill had already thrown her in the brig. Bill supposed they could both consider themselves lucky that’s all they’d done to each other. It all seemed a joke in retrospect. They’d already laughed about it. But it so easily could have ended like scenes from a nightmare. In the meantime, Bill would be patient and understanding and do whatever was in his power to reassure Laura of the strength they both had to resist these horrors.

“You can stay here,” he said, smiling to let her know he was not offended. She looked up at him uncertainly. “Stay here,” he insisted gently. “Try not to think about it.”

But he knew it would be impossible for her not to, and it tore at his heart.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kendra confronts Cain after her trial.

Lee had never expected the request to attend Cain’s trial. He would sit on the Panel next to Tigh, offer a brief character assessment, and contemplate the thoughts running through the accused woman’s mind as she sat there in the middle of the room staring as though the person inside had left the body long ago.

She spoke only when addressed directly and with no more words than she had to. She remained emotionless as her charges were read and as his father talked about extraordinary circumstances and how the most horrific of actions save lives and not one among them could deny what those decisions did to their own soul.

He talked about how in nature the strongest survive. Humanity as a species was under threat. It was not unreasonable for Cain to assume that she and her crew were all that survived the Cylon attack. She believed they were the last of their species. If Humanity, a mere two hundred men and women from hundreds of billions, were to survive, they would have to be strong.

Nature was unforgiving. It would not stop to consider sentimentality or morals or our personal feelings. Nature demanded Humanity fight with all that it had, even if it meant sacrificing its own to preserve itself, to give Humanity a future and, hopefully, spare those future generations the agony of having to make such sacrifices.

But Humanity was strong now. From a few hundred they had become a force of thousands. Now was the time when the human spirit needed to prevail. Or Humanity was doomed to degenerate into beasts unworthy of survival.

As Lee listened to his father he could hear the private shame in the grave texture of his voice. To see Helena Cain was to see someone the man could have easily become himself.

Through all this Cain remained quiet and unchanged. Even as his father passed sentence she accepted it mutely. Then she was taken away.

Shaw’s unmistakable knock rapped a militant rhythm against the door of his quarters.   
“Come in,” Lee said. He sat at his coffee table, reading the reports of the successful transfer of deckhands between Battlestars. He’d already seen Cally who had very little to say to him beyond a loathing glare, somehow chilling from a girl so small. At least no one was trying to kill anyone else. Lee could put up with some hateful leering.

Shaw came to stand before him. “I hear Cain escaped the death penalty.”  
Lee sat up straighter and put down the report. “Eight years labor on the Monarch and Majahaul.”  
Shaw scoffed. “She could do that in her sleep.”  
Commander Lee Adama smiled. “I don’t doubt it. Little disheartening to think we could still be homeless in eight years. You must be relieved though.”  
“We’re all just trying to survive out here.”

Lee sighed and slipped his fingers together. He could still feel the control in his hand. The trigger under his finger. “Yeah.”  
“Anyway, I know this isn’t the best time but I need to take some time off. Clear my head. I feel kind of useless to you right now. I won’t be more than twenty-four hours.”  
Lee looked up at his XO. “Of course. Whenever you need it. I appreciate this ordeal couldn’t have been easy for you.”

Shaw only nodded, averting her eyes. Lee respected she was a women who didn’t like to display her emotions or express her feelings. But he saw amusement bloom slightly on her face as she said, “Finished?”

Lee looked. She was eyeing the logs he had left in a pile on an end table beside the sofa.   
“Oh,” Lee flinched. “No. I, uh,…I stopped actually. I felt like I was…”  
“Reading your sister’s diary?”

He chuckled. “Reading a woman’s diary and that’s bad enough.”  
Shaw spat and shook her head. She went to leave the room but paused at the door. “So you didn’t get to the bit where I come on board, then?”  
“Uh, no.”  
“Shame,” Shaw smirked, and Lee realized it was the first time he had seen her almost smile. Her fingers lingered on the hatch. “I always wanted to know what she really thought of me.”

As she left Lee had to wonder if Kara was right about Kendra Shaw.

 

* * *

 

Machinery roared and steam hissed. Bodies gleamed with grime and sweat. Unlike the refinery ships, miners didn’t have the convenience of conveyer belts. They didn’t sift through gravel. The miners worked with slabs, boulders, rocks. First they had to be cleaned. Then they had to be broken up. And to preserve fuel, this was achieved with raw human power.

The workers were somewhat mystified by Helena’s arrival. The ones who still had spirit and some semblance of a mind looked up from their labor and stared, murmured, and rumors passed down the ship. The woman was soon tasked to filling carts with rock and pushing it over to the only machines allowed that would grind them into gravel to be shipped to the refinery.

The hacking and pounding and chipping performed a relentless chorus of metal on rock, and the grinding machinery was harsh in her ears. The rocks were heavy, the cart wheels stuck with rust. It wasn’t long before sweat dripped from Helena’s brow and her skin flashed in the dim light with every flex and strain of her muscles.

Her breath came thin but even and it was this sound she concentrated on, thinking with each slow inhale that she didn’t deserve this. She deserved worse.

The attention she received was not unexpected. Most of the men working on the ship were from the Astral Queen, hoping to reduce their sentence and earn their freedom. They were working voluntarily, under the watchful eye of several Marines stationed about the gangways.

A siren signalled the end of working hours. Helena arched back from packing another rock into the cart and ran a hand through oil drenched hair. She had been assigned a room on the Monarch instead of the Astral Queen out of respect and perhaps concern that her public profile would earn undesired attention.

The rooms were all reinforced so the ongoing noise of the machinery would not bother the workers having time off. Helena desperately needed a shower. She shuffled into her room and kicked closed the door. Her spine cracked as she stretched and rubbed her neck and she moaned through the throbbing of tired, aching muscles.

She turned to her locker and froze. Lieutenant Shaw was standing there. Helena tried to remember if she’d entered the room with her eyes closed. It seemed the only way she would have missed the girl in such close quarters, especially as she held her sidearm at Helena’s head. Beyond it, the girl’s eyes burned like black flames.

Apart from failing to notice a potential threat in her room, what surprised Helena was the instant sting of fear. She thought she would have welcomed a confrontation like this.  
  
“Major Shaw,” Helena said.  
“Former Admiral Cain.”  
Not a single muscle twitched on Shaw’s face. Helena couldn’t even tell if Shaw’s lips had moved at all. She swallowed, cringing at how dry her mouth was.   
  
Shaw reached for something that glinted silver and chucked it to Helena. The woman caught and inspected it, then looked to Shaw for instruction. The girl gestured to a chair beside her.   
“Over here,” she said.

Helena complied. She walked across the tiny room in two steps and sat down in the chair as Shaw came around her, the gun trained for a fatal shot.   
“Thread the cuffs around the bars and lock your wrists.”  
  
Helena kept her eyes fixed on Shaw as she followed the order. As the cuffs clicked into place Shaw holstered her sidearm. Helena watched her walk to the hatch, lock it and then return, standing close, inches beside her.   
  
“Good. Now that we’re comfortable, I suppose I should come clean. I was the one who sold you out.”   
Helena watched her as she paced back across the room, hands held neatly at her back.   
“I didn’t count on everyone being so sympathetic to your situation. Seems most of the leaders in the fleet have their own demons. I thought I might have something when Dr Baltar brought up your treatment of Gina. Did you know some of those ‘interrogation’ sessions were recorded?”  
  
Helena clenched her teeth tightly. She had not been aware but she wasn’t about to give this girl the satisfaction of seeing her so disarmed.   
  
“Now, you’re probably thinking, why. Why am I doing this? Why do I want you dead? Well, why did you kill your XO? Why did you have me kill those people on the Scylla?” Shaw turned and scoffed, eyeing Helena with disdain. “Well, I guess that’s the issue. Not that I need you to answer me. It won’t change what I did. It won’t change what you turned me into.”  
  
She dug her hand into her pocket and pulled out a familiar relic of the first Cylon War that made Helena’s heart clench. Shaw held it up in her fingers, turning it about casually. “This.” She flicked out the blade and made the light glint on its silver edge. “Apparently it’s some sort of symbol to you. It magically justifies everything you’ve done.”  
  
Shaw’s voice ripped harshly through the air. “You think I was following you? You think I believed in you? You think I felt anything but sickness when you compared me to this as though it was something to be proud of?” She stepped closer, and Helena’s eyes shifted for the first time from Shaw’s eyes to the tip of the knife.   
  
She eyed it and shuddered visibly as though she could already feel it against her skin, slicing slowly through her flesh. Undoubtedly that’s where it would end up. And Helena sat there contemplating how gruesome her death was going to be, and cared very little for whatever Shaw was rambling about.  
  
“As though I had achieved some unique standard of perfection?” Clouds swirled in Shaw’s eyes, but not in desperation. Helena could see it was true she wanted no answers to her questions, even if she had answers to give.

“I was scared of you. I was just trying to survive. Everyone I knew was dead. My home was gone. There was nowhere for me to go. I watched you kill your XO. And what you did to your girlfriend…Cylons should be killed. But what you did proved just how human she was to you and that’s what really sickened me.”  
  
Shaw stared hard for a moment, pain and resolve whispering in the steady inhale and exhale of her breath against Helena’s face. Helena stared back, waiting, wondering if it was worth making some attempt to get out of this.

She felt as useless as she had all those years ago, trembling with the uncertainty and fear of adolescence, thinking desperately that a tiny worn blade could repel Centurion bullets.   
  
Shaw shifted and Helena flinched, cursing the noise she made as she felt the tip of the blade press against her cheek. Shaw dragged it loosely down her skin, stroking shakily, but gently.   
“And then Kara Thrace comes along. You forget all about me but I watch. I watch you ensnare her with your praises and promises. Dangling shiny new pins in front of her face, hypnotizing her so the poor girl doesn’t see. Doesn’t see you for who you really are. Doesn’t see what you’re doing to her.”  
  
The blade pierced up under her chin and Helena leaned her head back to relieve the pressure. Shaw stepped side on and smoothed her hand over Helena’s brow, encouraging the way her attempt to distance herself from the knife revealed more of her neck.   
  
“You only made her CAG to trap her,” She said, casually stroking the blade up and down the length of her throat. “To pit her against her friends, the only friends she has left since the attack.”

Helena hated that she was so afraid and that she was showing it. Showing it in the fretful noises coaxed from her throat by the movement of the blade against it. Showing it in the frantic shimmering of her eyes while Shaw continued to speak.

“You did that because in the end, you knew she would only have you. She’d only be able to come to you. And just like me, you would frak her up. That’s what you do to people. You frak them up. You destroy everything they are.”   
  
Kendra’s eyes were still as she looked down at Helena. Slowly she lifted the razor above her face. “You told me a while ago that by setting aside my fear, my hesitation, my revulsion, I’d become a razor. You said that the War was forcing us all to become razors.”

Shaw was looking curiously at the blade as she twisted it over Helena’s head. “That if we didn’t we weren’t going to survive. Well maybe we would survive. But then what would be left for us? What would be left for us when our survival meant taking the lives of innocent people?”  
  
Helena watched as Shaw began to circle around her.   
“I don’t think you’ve ever stopped to consider what it is like to be a Razor.” Shaw crouched over her shoulder from behind and tilted the blade in her fingers where Helena couldn’t help looking at it. “Well…”   
  
The force at which the small blade came down was so fast, at first all Helena felt was the fist pounding against her thigh. But in the few seconds later the flesh and muscle torn open by unyielding metal set her nerves blazing. Her whole body clenched and she shrieked, kicking her other leg instinctively against the floor to launch herself away from the assault.   
  
Shaw easily held her steady, keeping her and the chair upright with one hand on her shoulder while the other still gripped the sheath of the flipknife. Shaw watched her intently, patiently waiting for the initial spasms of pain to subside and for Helena to catch her breath.   
  
The woman growled and thought only that she should have shot Kendra Shaw in the head the moment she walked into her CIC. She tried to say so, but felt something hot race up the back of her throat. She coughed and spluttered, bile pouring over her lip.   
  
Kendra Shaw crouched lower to sneer into Helena’s ear.   
“Razors hurt.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kara and Lee race to stop Kendra from murdering Helena Cain.

Lee urgently turned another page, the tension in his gut coiling tighter and tighter. He had thought to skip ahead in Cain’s log to where Shaw came onboard but had overestimated the entries. Before he flipped back words began to jump out at him. Scylla. Sacrifice. Razor. Lieutenant Shaw. Innocent. Lives...  
  
The least Lee could do for his XO was read a little further and find out exactly what Shaw’s former Commanding Officer thought of her. He couldn’t deny he was also curious to confirm or disprove Kara’s theory that their relationship had been anything more than professional.  
  
Suddenly he was on the phone, desperate to contact the hanger deck.  
“Chief,” he barked when the man answered his call. He’d almost forgotten about the transfer of deckhands. “Did Major Shaw take a shuttle to the Zephyr?”

Chief’s voice was bemused. “She took a Raptor a while ago because the shuttle had already left. Everything okay?”  
Lee couldn’t be polite. He hung up and got through to CIC asking if Shaw’s Raptor had made it to the Zephyr. When he learned the bird had gone instead to the Monarch he cursed loudly.  
  
“How long ago was that?” he demanded.  
“Almost half an hour ago, Sir,” said Hoshi.  
Lee smacked the phone down and launched himself from behind his desk. Opening the hatch, he threw himself out of the room and took off down the corridor. He nearly collided with Kara who appeared as if from nowhere when he rounded a corner.  
  
“Somewhere to be?” she teased.  
“What are you doing here?” Lee regretted instantly that he had snapped, but there were more important things to worry about than Kara’s feelings. Fortunately for him, Kara’s feelings were not so easily hurt.  
“Old Man sent me to make sure the deckhands were transitioning okay. Wish the guy could give me a proper mission. You don’t have anything I could shoot do you?”  
  
Lee froze with the innocent irony of her words. Kara frowned.  
“Gods, Lee, what’s going on?” she asked, taking a step back.  
“It was Shaw who killed those people on the Scylla. I think she’s the one who wanted justice for Cain. I think she’s gone after her herself.”  
  
Kara grit her teeth. “Frak, Lee, why do you have to be a slow reader!”

 

* * *

 

Kendra sat on the edge of the cot, listening to the soft, rhythmic patting of blood dripping from Helena’s leg. She wanted the woman to suffer as long as possible, but knew she had very little time.

If Lee was the kind of good hearted and courteous man she thought he was, he would be reading up on her involvement in the Scylla massacre, having hoped to surprise her with a glowing assessment from Cain.  
  
She hadn’t really planned to take things this far. She hadn’t been able to sleep properly since being witness to Cain’s execution of Colonel Belzen in the CIC of the Pegasus. That bullet had shattered more than a man’s skull.

Reality made even less sense than it did when she learned the Colonies had been destroyed by the Cylons and that her family, her friends, they were all dead. Just like that.  
  
She saw her visual field crack from the middle outwards like glass. As pieces fell away, flickering and fading like a bad signal dying on a monitor, she heard herself report they were being boarded by Cylons. And then, with a frightening static rush filling her ears, the world raced back.  
  
Or it was pretending to be. The fabric of reality she knew had been torn away, and revealed was a new world, similar in every single way and yet she felt the discomfort of not belonging in it. She had fallen from her own world into this new one and so powerful was her desperation to return it felt as though her very skin wanted to rip from her body in an effort to go back.  
  
Nothing mattered then. She decided that this world wasn’t hers. She looked into the eyes of those people on the Scylla, the eyes of that young boy, his mother, all those children and their families and she was sickened.

She couldn’t feel them. Looking into their eyes, she couldn’t recognize them as people. She couldn’t see them as being just like her. They were as foreign and unfamiliar creatures. And she felt nothing killing them.  
  
“What was that?” Kendra asked. Helena had muttered something. She was conscious again. Kendra listened to her wince in the effort to fill her lungs and speak again.  
“I said, hurry up and frakking kill me.”

Kendra regarded her for a moment. Helena’s head was down, hanging to one side as though she hung from a noose around her neck.  
  
Kendra got up and crouched beside her, putting her hands on her wounded thigh and relishing the drawn, high pitched moan that cracked her lips. She’d left the razor sticking into her flesh and Helena grunted and howled as Kendra curled her fingers around it, disturbing the metal against her bone. The barest touch felt like she was opening up a fresh new wound.  
  
Slowly, she pulled out the blade, twisting her fist as she did, scraping bone. She watched the muscles and veins clench in Helena’s neck and face before a growl of agony erupted from her throat.  
“Gods! You frakking bitch,” the former Admiral sobbed, hissing between her teeth so violently, spit and bile flew from her mouth.  
  
Kendra calmly stood up, looming over Helena with the razor held delicately in her fingers. There were so many places to cut and stab a body. So much damage she could do with such a tiny instrument. She found all she had to do was stand there, slowly and coldly running her gaze over Helena’s body. The woman sniffed, shuddered and broke into fearful sobs.

 

* * *

 

“Can’t you make this thing go faster?” Kara grumbled, perched anxiously over the back of the pilot’s seat. Racetrack ducked the Raptor under another ship and swung them out towards the edge of the fleet.  
“You wanna get out and push?” she snapped. Kara was going to ignore her but then Racetrack muttered, “Frakking Viper pilots.”  
  
Finally the Monarch came into view and it was a breath later they were docking in the hanger bay. Lee had called ahead to the ship’s captain to announce their arrival and a representative came to greet them. The man looked scruffy and greasy and Lee marched up to him.  
  
“Commander Adama,” the man said, “I’m to take you to our control room.”  
Kara ran out ahead, awkwardly consulting a map on a handheld monitor. A medical team were close behind her, carrying a kit and a folded stretcher between them.  
  
As Kara raced towards Cain’s designated room, Lee went with the other man to the control room. Crossing the working plant and speeding down several corridors, Kara huffed with relief as she came up to Helena’s door. She ordered the medical team to wait a short distance away, then rested back against the opposite wall, panting anxiously.  
  
Lee’s voice crackled over her radio. “Starbuck, I’m in the control room. What’s your position?”  
Kara flicked her hair from over her face and lifted the radio to her mouth. “I’m outside her door.”  
“Okay. From here we can see the door has been locked. Because these old ships were usually manned by convicts all the doors can be locked and unlocked from here.”  
  
Kara was leaning carefully against Cain’s door, and spoke quietly. “I can’t hear anything inside.”  
“You won’t. They’re reinforced. They’re also fairly small. Kara, Shaw will hear the hatch unlock. If we give her time to react she could kill Cain. We have to coordinate this perfectly.”  
  
Kara smiled wearily. “Of course.”  
“You’ll have to throw open the door in the same second it unlocks. There’s a three second delay from the time I initiate the sequence. I can count you down, but you’ll have to open the door and subdue Shaw in the same action. Think you can manage it?”

Kara tossed her shoulders and scoffed. “Certainly pulled off crazier shit.”  
She heard Lee snicker despite his concern. “You ready?”

 

* * *

 

Kendra stood back critically from her work. There were too many cuts and too much blood drooling slowly from deep stab wounds. The woman would bleed out before long, and Kendra wanted Cain conscious before she landed the killing blow. She wanted her to see it coming. 

  
Casually she replaced the razor into the deep wound on her thigh, fitting it inside the flesh with a satisfying slurp that drew another gurgled moan from her victim. Then she reached for her sidearm and extended the gun to the woman’s forehead.  
  
Shakily, Helena lifted her head and looked up, blinking to focus on her killer. “What…no final words for me to take to my grave?” she asked, blood and saliva trickling from the edges of her mouth where it mixed with the tears on her neck.  
  
Kendra returned her contempt with empty eyes.  
Helena panted, more tears streaming down her face. She just wanted to die. “What the frak are you waiting for?” she whined pathetically, lips trembling. She could see the pitch darkness of the barrel inches from her face and sobbed desperately. “Do it! Kill me!”  
  
Kendra tensed her finger on the trigger.

 

* * *

 

Kara strapped her radio to her belt and took the handle of the door with one hand. In the other she held her sidearm. She closed her eyes and sent a clumsy prayer to the Gods.  
  
It seemed like a heartbeat. Lee’s voice counted down steadily. Kara didn’t hear the clank of the hatch unlocking. She had put all her faith in Lee’s voice so when he reached ‘one’ she yanked hard on the handle and threw all her weight against the door with her shoulder.

Kendra’s eyes snapped on her, chilling like the cold of the weapon in her hands.

Kara couldn’t be sure she even saw it; the subtle flex of muscles in Kendra’s arm, pulling the tendon of the finger perched on the trigger. The movement could have just been shock, or surprise, or any number of things.

But in times of War it is better to react than not at all. A moment’s hesitation could get herself or countless others killed.  
  
Kara wasn’t even sure which gun fired until she was looking down at Kendra’s crumpled body, a small hole on her forehead and a pool of blood growing steadily around her vacant stare.  
  
She holstered her weapon and turned to Helena. She was looking down at her for too long before she even really noticed her at all.  
“Oh gods.” Kara grimaced, not knowing how or where to begin helping her. Then she remembered the waiting medical team and called them in. She quickly scrambled for her radio because it was then she registered the sound of Lee’s voice calling frantically for her.  
  
“I got her,” she said into the little black box, “She’s alive. Barely.” Kara swallowed. “Shaw’s dead.”  
Lee took a while to respond, and when he did his voice was heavy. “I’m on my way.”  
The medical staff were tending to Cain.  
“She’s cuffed to the chair,” one of them alerted Kara.  
  
Kara strapped her radio aside again. Assuming Shaw would have the key she went to inspect her body.  
  
“…Thrace?” Helena said when Kara was crouched behind her, carefully unlocking the cuffs and gently removing them from her wrists.  
Kara frowned. “Yeah.”  
The medics helped Helena from the chair and supported her gently to the stretcher on the floor.  
  
“Flattering…coming…to my rescue,” Helena croaked after being laid carefully on the stretcher.  
Kara stood beside her as the stretcher wheels were extended and she was lifted to hip height. She looked down at the woman, observing the cuts across her face, the blood stains around the torn fabric of her tanks and the flipknife still sticking out of her leg.  
  
She spat piteously. “I just shot the first body I saw. Could have easily been you.”  
Helena coughed and her eyes closed, a grim shade to her features.  
“I’m not that lucky, Thrace.”


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kara keeps Cain's razor.

The knock at Lee’s door felt like a hammer cracking the inside of his skull, shockwaves churning acids in his gut. He wanted whoever it was to just go away, and he was too exhausted to resist grumbling the command out loud.  
  
He heard the door open. There were few people in the fleet who would dare barge in without consent, but he was surprised when his father peered inside. Lee sighed and slumped in his chair, fingering the dogtags draped across his palms. “Admiral Adama. To what do I finally owe the honor of your visit?”  
  
The old man grunted gently. “I guess I deserve that.”  
Lee tossed a glance upward at a sting of regret. His father took cautionary steps towards him.

“I admit,” Bill said, “There should have been more communication between us and I am entirely at fault. I should have told you we were arresting Cain. I should have been more considerate to your crew. I guess I’m not used to being responsible for more than one Battlestar, for more than just the crew working and living on the same ship I do.”  
  
Lee let his head fall again, and he ran his thumbnail over the name engraved on the metal cradled in his fingertips.  
Bill gave a short laugh. “I guess that’s why I was never promoted to Admiral. I know I didn’t earn these pins, but I promise you, I’m going to do my damned hardest to be the kind of leader they represent. The kind of man they represent.”  
  
His eyes were large and bright with resolve when Lee looked up at him. The lines on his brow were deep with determination, his gaze solid and unyielding. For a fleeting moment Lee could see the hero he once worshipped, from a time when his hands could reach no higher than his father’s belly and the man’s face seemed to fill the sky.  
  
Bill Adama bowed his head, fidgeting a moment with his fingers and Lee felt his heart twist at the shame he could see weighing down this gallant Soldier.  
“But I promise you more, that being that kind of man means being a better father to you first.”

Lee laughed awkwardly through his teeth, but his smile was genuine. It was all he could do to express that he accepted his father’s apology. If he spoke now, more than words would spill out, and he clenched his jaw suddenly to keep that from happening.  
  
Bill approached his desk and noticed the log open in front of him. There was only a small bit of text at the top of one page. The rest of the page and the next was blank.

“I’m sorry about Kendra Shaw. She was a promising young officer,” he said. Lee could detect the uncertainty in his voice, not knowing if it was the right thing to say. Of course he would have found out by now that it was Kendra Cain ordered to kill those innocent civilians, and that it was Bill’s leniency that may have cost the girl her life.  
  
But Lee had no doubt in his mind that his father had made the right decision. It was only a tragedy that someone innocent had to pay for it. In trying to avoid any more senseless loss of life, Bill had compelled a young woman to murder and Humanity lost another soul.  
  
“She wanted to know what Cain thought of her,” Lee said finally, feeling some control over his voice. He smiled sadly. “I wish I’d just told her what I thought of her. Maybe then...”

Bill reached for the open log and turned it around so he could read it and he spoke the words he saw there out loud.

“My father told me that my XO had to be someone I could trust. He told me that the two of us had to make a team. I think that would be true of a Leader who had trained and nurtured his crew from the moment they set foot onto his battlestar. I am a Leader who comes to this crew as an outsider and I wanted to show them that I was a Leader who respected them, believed in them, and was honoured to be their Commanding Officer.  
  
I needed an XO who embodied that belief, someone who was to the Pegasus what the soul is to a human being. Major Kendra Shaw possessed that rare spirit you could see blazing around her. She wore it like a personal challenge to the gods, daring them to extinguish it. I believe, somewhere, that spirit still burns, as brilliantly and defiantly as it did the day I asked her to be my XO.”  
  
Lee turned away, his father’s voice lending a passion and pathos to his clumsy ink smudged scrawl. Carefully, Bill turned the book around and pushed it back towards his son.  
“I understand Major Shaw was not particularly fond of Fisk or Garner,” he said.  
Lee sniffed. “No. I believe the feeling was mutual,” he said, smiling fondly. He hadn’t particularly liked them either.  
  
“Then I think it’s clear,” Bill said, “that she believed in you.”  
His father was holding his gaze and would not let him fall. Lee was unprepared for what it would be like as a Leader to hear that someone believed in him. One of his own crew. And even though she had never said so, he believed his father was right. The feeling overwhelmed him.  
  
Bill turned to leave and Lee choked. “Dad.”  
The old man turned and smiled, and saw his son fighting a deep and terrible pain.  
“I…I let her down.” Lee’s lip trembled and he inhaled deeply.  
“Kendra Shaw was let down, but not by you, Lee. You tried to save her.”  
  
His father’s reassurance; that was all a son needed sometimes. Lee breathed deeply and lifted his shoulders, feeling for the first time like the Leader he wanted to be.  
“Dad,” he called again before Bill could leave.  
“Yeah?”  
  
Lee smiled lopsidedly. “Thanks.”  
“You’re welcome, son.” The pride in his father’s voice lingered in the room long after he left and Lee could finally feel at ease. The task of regaining the faith of this downtrodden, traumatized and demoralized crew seemed less daunting. He needed an XO.  
  
But maybe instead of choosing someone who could heal the Pegasus he should start to trust in his ship. It was strong and bold and had survived much with barely a dent to her hull. And he would have to start trusting that his crew was just as strong. They didn’t need a legacy. They just needed someone to believe in. Lee wanted it to be themselves.

 

* * *

 

She wasn’t that lucky. Kara wondered what Cain meant. Either the woman would rather Kara had shot her instead, or she was complimenting her skills as a marksman. It was one or the other and Kara hated that she was left to work it out. Cain was still frakking with her.  
  
“She lost a lot of blood and there’s extensive nerve damage to the left thigh. It may take months of rehabilitation before she will be fit for any hard labor on the mining ships,” Cottle explained with a grain to his voice.

Kara spat sardonically. “You’re saying she can’t carry out her sentence.”  
“Not for the moment. And you can’t keep her on that dirty ship. You’ll have to find alternative holding arrangements for her.” The old doctor tended briskly to another patient as Kara looked at her feet, grinning at the jokes Gods could play.  
  
“Sure. She goes around the universe killing civilians like a common Cylon and now she gets a holiday,” she grumbled.  
Cottle laughed gruffly. “Pissing about Galactica’s brig with a useless leg and being in constant agony is hardly my idea of a holiday. At least on the Monarch I’d have something to do.”  
“I’ll take your recommendations to Adama,” Kara said, and cast her eyes to the white screen around a bed in the corner where a bitter Marine stood guard.  
  
She wondered if Cain was awake and had been listening. She wondered if the woman was waiting for some kind of confrontation. She wasn’t going to get it. Cottle was packing away instruments and medical supplies when Kara noticed the metal tray. Lying inside it was Cain’s flipknife.  
  
When the doctor turned away, Kara snatched it and tucked it quickly into her back pocket. Her hands were just by her sides when Cottle turned around again.  
“Anything else, Captain Thrace?” he asked.  
“No, Sir.”  
Cottle grumbled. “Then I’m sure you have places to be.”  
  
She did have somewhere to be. Sharon was surprised to see her. She sat up on the cot, eyes narrowed in curiosity and apprehension. She didn’t trust visitors. Most came to leer and swear at the window to her cage damning her for their loss, their heartache, their miserable lives.  
  
Kara couldn’t blame them. She watched Sharon stand from the bed and pad across the cold cell floor in bare feet. She cradled her swollen belly with one arm and pulled frazzled hair from over her face with the other. There was a mystified quality to the Cylon’s eyes. Kara thought it might have something to do with the hate Sharon couldn’t see in hers.  
  
Kara gave an abrupt order to the Marine standing guard, and he unlocked the cell door for her. Sharon was grinning when Kara walked slowly into the room.  
“I never thought you’d actually come,” Sharon said, near breathless with appreciation. “I’ve wanted to-”  
“Save it,” Kara snapped. Sharon bit her lips. Sudden nerves made her eyes glimmer.  
  
Kara indulged a small sense of smug pride before saying what she came to say. “There’s one thing you Cylons are right about. Humans are messed up.”  
Sceptical, Sharon narrowed her eyes as Kara continued.  
“The things we do to each other are…we can be downright monstrous.” She didn’t keep the shame from her voice, and she couldn’t look Sharon in the eye.  
  
She was thinking of Gina and how close Sharon came to suffering the same fate. She was sure where Lieutenant Thorne had failed, once Helo and Chief were executed, Cain would have sent another in his place. She couldn’t begin to think of what would have been done to the child Sharon carried. Kara swallowed and cleared her throat of a foul taste and smiled ironically.  
  
“It’s getting harder and harder to know who to trust.” When she looked up at Sharon again her mind flooded with memories. They flipped across her inner eye like the pages of dusty books, faded and torn in places but no longer so painful to recall them. “But I just can’t stop seeing you as the kid who couldn’t stick her landings. I can’t stop seeing you as the nugget who frakking shattered my eardrums when she got her wings.”  
  
Tears were thick in Sharon’s eyes and when she chuckled they spilled down her cheeks, glinting in the cell light. Kara had to fight the sudden dread that she was being fooled by Cylon programming. The young woman before her was another Sharon entirely to the one in her memories and yet they were memories this woman shared with her.  
  
Memories were really all one had by which to have a sense of identity. It was just as likely Kara would wake up and find those memories were just as fake to her as they were to Sharon.  
“I know that wasn’t you,” Kara said, and saw Sharon clench her jaw with unease. The Cylon’s fingers came together anxiously.  
  
“But I don’t know what it would be like to remember doing something and know that it wasn’t me at all. You say you’re your own person, you know who you are and you make your own decisions. But if I’m to believe that your emotional reaction right now is genuine, and influenced by some sentimental affection you have for me, then even you can’t help but be influenced by those fake memories. Part of you has to be the Sharon I knew. And the Sharon you are now…”

Kara paused as her throat tightened. Sharon’s eyes were so large and bright with expectation, the same look in her face when Boomer asked Kara if she thought the Old Man would give her another chance to pass her flight training.  
  
“She’s done nothing but help us. She voluntarily risks her life to save us again and again.”  
The smile that appeared on Sharon’s face was slight and cautionary.  
“Without this Sharon, the fleet would have been destroyed. The Cylons really would have wiped us out.”  
  
She was taking a risk. Her gut was reeling. She knew she would always feel she had made a mistake and doomed Humanity. Kara just had to have faith that, if she was making a mistake, Starbuck would be able to fix it.  
  
“You’ve given us absolutely no reason to consider you an enemy. Right now, I trust you a hell of lot more than I trust most of the people in this frakked up fleet.” She’d said it. There was no going back now. She glanced at the security camera in the corner of the cell. A moment later the door was opening and Sharon gasped with surprise.  
  
“Helo?” She edged forward slightly.  
The man approached Kara’s side and Sharon looked to her for an explanation. Kara trained her features and said, “I’ve had a talk with the Old Man. We decided we only keep our enemies locked up in cells. We’ve got you a room.”  
  
Kara felt her heart swell as a grin spread broadly across Sharon’s face. As her tears fell freely she reached for Helo and he met her with a joyous and loving embrace. Kara was frowning when the woman parted from Helo to thank her.  
  
“You screw us over and I swear to the Gods I will personally frak you up,” Kara warned her. Sharon only beamed at her and Kara had no time to retreat. Sharon threw her arms around her.  
“Thank you! Thank you!” She parted and suddenly clutched Kara’s head between her hands and kissed her hard on the mouth. Kara went rigid in alarm and Helo’s mouth dropped open in surprise.  
  
Sharon broke the kiss with a loud smack of her lips and Kara gasped as though she’d been without oxygen for several minutes.

“Thank you!” Sharon shook her again. When she finally released her Kara staggered backwards and immediately wiped her sleeve across her mouth, repeatedly.  
Helo wrapped an arm around the woman he loved, his hand firmly on the small of her back. “Shall I escort you to our new home?”  
  
Sharon slipped her own arm around his back, grinning up at him. “Lead the way, good Sir.”  
As Helo led her from the cell, he tossed a look over his shoulder at Kara. The man was eyeing her with lifted eyebrows and Kara gave him an unappreciative glare. She didn’t smile until she was sure no one was watching.


End file.
